


Dirty and Beautiful Things

by KateThorne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:10:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KateThorne/pseuds/KateThorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-series. Dean has never been able to deny Sam anything, for better or for worse. Sam leaves for Stanford to give Dean the freedom he needs. They both know that they are the worst thing for the other, but they can't seem to stay away. Sam and Dean have always been able to find each other, even in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time that Dean molested his little brother had been on Sam's thirteenth birthday, with Sam's lips parted and his hand in Dean's hair, the whole time panting, "Yes, more, please, _please_."

Dean wished he could say that he was drunk. It wouldn't be a complete lie; somehow, the brand new handle of vodka that he had bought to celebrate was almost a quarter gone and he knew that Sam hardly drank any of it. But if Dean was truly drunk, he wouldn't have come so hard and so fast in his pants as he humped the bed in time to Sam's gasps and moans. His lips were on Sam's cock, tracing the vein, discovering the delicate contours of the head and feeling a little jealous that somehow Sam had gotten the big cock gene. Just like his hands and his feet, the weedy teenager still had to grow into his extremities. That included dick, apparently.

Sam only was thirteen, he wasn't even done growing yet, puberty hadn't even finished its transformation and Dean was running his big, old, dirty hands all over Sam's virtually hairless body. Sam was practically a baby, just barely a teenager. He had been so earnest as he looked at Dean, as he held Dean's hand to his cock and pumped up into it, quietly begging him. Dean had never been able to deny Sam anything, not even his first blow job. His first blowjob, his rite of passage into adulthood had been given to him by his brother in a seedy motel.

The air conditioning didn't work, the tap water tasted like pennies, there were more than a couple of ambiguous stains on the bedding and the carpet and Sam was lying on his back, blissed out and reaching for Dean, trying to kiss his lover, strike that his brother. That was how it had started, after all. Sam, tipsy from his two shots of vodka, leaning forward to kiss his Dean, to learn Dean's taste and his rhythm. That was… it was too much. If Dean was going to do this, molest his baby brother, he wasn't going to pretend that it was anything besides an act of unforgiveable depravity.

Dean wasn't blind, he knew that Sam wanted him. Knew that his name fell from his brother's lips as the boy explored his own body. It should have been a beautiful time for Sam, learning his pleasure. Everything should have been beautiful for Sam, but no, he got a bisexual brother, motels that charged by the hour and a life that revolved around nightmares.

The least Dean could do for him was let Sam see how dirty it was. He wasn't about to let Sam think that this could be love, that that line could be blurred so easily.

Dean's first time had been around the same age Sam was now, but it was a really shitty thing to use as a measuring stick. It had been in a truck stop bathroom. Their dad had been trying to fix up the Impala, Sam had been knocked out in the backseat and Dean was restless. It wasn't a trucker, for which Dean was grateful, but it was one of the several boys who hung around the stops on the highway, looking to get somewhere else or get just high in exchange for a few minutes on their knees.

He was a cute boy, Mexican, probably. A kid who had run across the border, willing to suck a cock, mow a lawn, or install drywall for pennies if it meant that he was close to some grand illusion of the American Dream.

But he had pretty eyes. The kind that were soft and warm, even a little inviting. He was a whore along a highway, hadn't he seen enough to turn him cold and hateful? Why did he smile like that? He smiled like maybe, somewhere, someone would treat him like a human being. He smiled like he hadn't learned his damn lesson.

"How much?" Dean had asked him. Fuck, he wished he sounded more grown up, like they do in the movies, hard and indifferent. He was talking to a twink hooker, now was not the time to get nervous.

The boy smiled, cocked his head and laced his fingers with Dean's leading him into the bathroom and locking the door. Dean expected him to get to his knees, instead the boy dropped his pants and leaned over the sink, presenting himself.

"I… I don't have that much…" Dean murmured, turning pink.

"Primera vez esta gratis. First time? It is free."

"…I…"

"Para ti, esta gratis. For you, it is free."

And there was that smile again. Like everything was going to be alright. Stupid whore. Didn't he know anything? But Dean unbuckled his belt with shaking hands and the boy watched him through the reflection of the bathroom mirror. Now that the moment had come, little Dean was getting cold feet and Dean silently cursed his flaccid cock.

The boy had been watching him and smiled understandingly before turning and dropping down. He kissed around the base, nuzzled his lips into the curly hair and took a long inhale like savoring, as if Dean was something special. The boy looked up with those warm eyes.

Everything is going to be ok, they promised him.

Once he was half hard, the boy took him into his mouth with a happy moan and let Dean shallowly fuck his lips. Then Dean bent the boy over the sink again, slipped on a condom from the vending machine and slid into him from behind while both were facing the mirror.

And Dean realized that the kid wasn't much older than he was; a year, maybe two. He had lived a hard life, the kind of life that made Dean's look cozy, but they were both outsiders, selling their souls away, little by little.

This kid probably wouldn't make it to twenty-five. Every time he bent over a sink, every time he got to his knees, he would grow a little colder. Honestly, how much longer could this kid keep up that whole 'first time is free' crap? How much longer could the kid afford it before he grew distant and hard simply out of a need to survive?

And Dean? Would he make it to twenty-five? Following the family business, putting his life on the line for the safety of people who may never know his name? How long did he have before he grew isolated and cynical like his father before him? How much of a difference was there between them, after all? Between the whore and the hunter? They both sacrificed the most intimate parts of themselves to service strangers. The kid's exposed ass bent over a sink and Dean risking his life everyday. Was it really all that different?

As Dean watched their reflections move together, he had the fleeting thought that maybe, in some other life, one where he was more than a silent shadow flitting into people's lives and the boy was more than a fuck that came with a fill-up he and this kid could be lovers. Those were the kind of eyes that he could come home to, that he could wake up to.

But Dean didn't have a home, so he just fucked him.

He didn't last very long. He didn't really want to. The bathroom smelled like piss and the boy's hole was too loose to be really sexy, especially when Dean realized that he was probably not the boy's first companion of the night. A whore was a whore, he wasn't going to hold it against him but that didn't mean that Dean wanted to revel in it either. When he was done, the boy smiled and turned to him. Dean kissed him, partly because he couldn't help it and partly because he wanted to know what it was like. Dean had never kissed anyone before.

The boy let him and smiled sadly before shaking his head and saying, "No mas, no more."

Dean reached into his pockets and pulled out all the cash he had, about thirty five dollars. It wouldn't even be enough for a hand job from most people, most people who weren't on the pipe. It definitely wasn't enough for the soft eyes and tender smile of this beautiful boy, but it was all Dean had. The kid smiled gratefully and then walked out of the bathroom, giving Dean a little privacy to clean himself up.

Dean hadn't bought it again after that. He didn't need to and then there the rash he got afterwards. At first it was just a few bumps that showed up a week after, when he was three states and a whole hunt away. Then came a mild fever that progressed into a raging fever and John came home from the hunt to find a nine year old Sam holding a rag to Dean's forehead and glaring at their father as if it was his fault.

By then, the rash had spread to his stomach and John's eyes traveled the angry red bumps to where they disappeared into the waistband of his boxers. He took a long sigh, ran a weathered paw down his face and threw Dean in the car, telling Sam to be careful, not let anyone in and shoot if someone came in anyways.

It was the first time Dean could remember being alone with his father and it was waiting at the free clinic. Dean was glad that his dad was listening as the nurse behind the barrier glass handed him the antibiotics because Dean really just wanted to melt into the floor and die. When they got to the Impala, John tossed the pills and a box of condoms into Dean's lap and said, "Use these next time, huh Einstein?" When Dean just grumbled something, John rolled his eyes and said, "Even during oral." and that shut Dean up.

There was no discussion about waiting, about Dean being too young or even really an investigation into who would have sex with a thirteen-year-old and why would they be carriers of gonorrhea. John Winchester didn't go asking questions he didn't want the answers to. He would deal with a problem when it presented itself, but he didn't go snooping into Dean and his beautiful bathroom whore.

The kid was sick. Would he know enough to get tested? Would he be able to get antibiotics? Would he really even care? Dean didn't let himself think about it, because that wouldn't help anyone. He didn't know the boy's name, he didn't wonder if anyone knew the whore's name. He didn't wonder if the kid knew that his days were numbered. A little bit of Dean's soul, a little bit of his faith in humanity and a beautiful boy with soft eyes died right then.

So Dean wasn't going to let that happen to Sam. That was rushed and beautiful and sad and it would stay with him like a scar for the rest of his life. But he would be damned if anyone scarred his baby brother. By giving Sam what he thought he wanted, Dean would show him what he didn't. Sam didn't want Dean. Not really. Dean was there. Dean was all filled out and he knew how to talk to girls and he drove the Impala and people generally liked him. Sam wanted to be him, not have him but the kid didn't know the difference yet.

Dean would suck his cock. He wouldn't suck his lips. He wouldn't let Sam think that sex with Dean was anything more than sex, period. It wasn't for the girls he brought into the car and it wasn't for the boys he sucked off in alleyways so it definitely wasn't for his baby brother.

But the worst part of it, the part that kept him up at night, was that he wanted it. Just for Sam, always for Sam had been his mantra since he had been old enough to speak, since he had been old enough to clutch an infant to his chest and run as fast as his little legs could carry him. He wasn't watching his house burn, he wasn't hearing his mother scream, hearing his father cry her name, long and mournful like a wounded wolf crying to the moon for the sun. He was saving Sam. He was running for Sam. His legs didn't hurt, his lungs didn't contract with ash, his eyes didn't water, because they couldn't. Because he was too busy saving Sammy for that sort of stuff.

He could give Sammy the last of the Cheerios. He could let Sammy have the remote because sacrificing things was easy when Sam looked up at him with those beautiful eyes and said, "Thanks De." But Dean was sporting a boner as he sucked Sam's cock. He was sporting a boner that just grew more insistent when he thought about his bulging pink dick in Sam's hand, in Sam's mouth, in Sam's… fuck, no child molester.

He wasn't immune to the sounds Sam made as he touched himself beneath the blankets, lips forming his name. He wasn't made of stone when Sam's eyes softened, when his pupils dilated, when he shifted in his chair to ease the tension in his pants as he reached for Dean over the cheap alcohol.

If Dean caught wind of a seventeen-year-old boy wanting, touching, sucking his baby brother, he would have been furious. He would have hunted the bastard down and ripped his balls off. He knew how to shoot a gun, how to hide a body and he wouldn't even think twice about doing that to someone who touched his brother. Someone who touched his brother like he was touching him now; with his hand at the hilt of his dick, grazing his balls and thrusting his head like some kind of professional.

"Dean…" Sam moaned, once and loudly and Dean fucked into the unyielding mattress hard enough to hurt before he was releasing into his pants as Sam released into him.

He let Sam's soft cock slip from his lips after it finished pulsing but then Dean needed to shove off his brother and race into the bathroom. Dean's vomit tasted like come and vodka. He didn't come out of the bathroom that night.

He didn't know if he was relieved or horrified that John had come home while he was curled up around the toilet bowl purging Sam's beauty and the cheap poison from his system. All he knew was that he was hung-over and he didn't have to talk to Sam about the molestation of the night before.

John peered at him over the paper before tilting his head towards the half-empty bottle (when did that happen?) and saying, "Maybe wait until Sammy's a little older, would ya?"

And Dean had to turn around and vomit again.

***

It wasn't just that one night and Dean never really thought that it would be. It didn't happen every night, or even every week and Dean was grateful for that. John bought a truck and gave Dean the Impala when he turned eighteen and Dean abused the Hell out of it with girls in the backseat, in the front seat, driving out to the lake with the radio turned up so they could roll around together on the sand.

Sam didn't say anything. At least not until he was sixteen and started bugging his brother about hogging the car. But Sam would glare. Sam would narrow his eyes at the girls who would flock to Dean at school, who would disappear with him into janitor's closets. Dean started to recognize it building like a volcano, an eye roll at first, then, a week later, a frown. A few days after that would be a snippy comment accompanied by the bitch face until finally, as they both laid in bed, in the dark and in the comfort of their own smells and their own things, Sam would whisper _"Dean…"_ soft and pleading. Not pathetic, not really, just sad. Just sad that Dean would kiss and stroke and hold all the girls in the world but he wouldn't do it to Sam. He would suck Sam. He wouldn't kiss Sam.

Dean heard it every time. He always found Sam in the night and would crawl into his bed and wrap his arms around his baby brother as Sam fucked against his leg, as Sam slipped his fingers into Dean's hair when Dean went down on him, as Sam begged him _please, PLEASE._

Sam would reach for him but Dean wouldn't let Sam do anything more than dry hump him. Usually Dean could come just by sucking Sam off, hearing Sam moan his name as he gave him what he needed. If that didn't work, if Sam came too fast or Dean was too drunk (the latter was the most frequent of the two) Dean would fuck his fist looking down at Sam's naked body, watching Sam watch him. One time Sam told Dean to come on him and traced a middle finger lazily over his own chest and up to his lips, marking the trail Dean's come could follow.

Dean didn't. He wasn't going to come on his brother's face, but the image started showing up in his dreams, started invading his thoughts even as he was awake, even as he was inside a girl. It made him come harder than anything that had ever come before it.

When Sam was seventeen was when things finally breached that line, that faint, but immovable line that separated weird from fucked up, from just a phase to something much more twisted.

Sam climbed into his bed.

Dean didn't know what to say to get him out and the part of him that he hated, the part that wanted Sam in every way, couldn't even muster up the allusion of wanting Sam to be anywhere besides between his sheets. So Dean pretended that he was still asleep, not able to dredge up a protest and yet not trusting himself to stop at just sucking Sam's cock. Not tonight. Not with Sam stroking his fingers down his back, not with Sam's lips at the base of his neck. Dean let his knees fall apart against the bed and his hips stretched deliciously against the mattress as he arched into it. Sam saw the movement.

_"Dean…"_

He pleaded like he had been since he was twelve, touching himself in the dark. Like he did that fateful night of his thirteenth birthday. But this Sam, the young man straddling his spine wasn't weedy and thin anymore. He'd shot up a foot over the winter and had adopted an appetite for weight training. Sam was still the beautiful boy with the hazel eyes that had asked for seconds of Cheerios and always gave him the prize at the bottom of the box, but this time it was accompanied by the strong, taut body of a man who was much harder to resist.

Fuck, every part of this moment, of these hands on his spine should make Dean want to vomit. He shouldn't be able to remember Sam in diapers and want that same cock, hairy and musky with masculinity now, between his lips or in his hand.

Just for Sam, always for Sam, had gotten him through a lot of shit. The messed up thing was that if Dean wasn't dying for it too, he'd have probably given Sam what he wanted, everything that he had to give a long time ago. But no, this was something Dean needed too, and that made it dirty somehow.

Sam was the pure one, soft as snow, young enough to still believe in love and everything being alright and Dean was the one who fell in love with beautifully dirty hookers in truck stop bathrooms and vomited Sam's come with vodka and shame.

"Dean?" Sam murmured, hesitant now that Dean was still unmoving. Sam stopped mapping Dean's body with his hands. Dean stifled a moan at its loss. "I… I'm so…." Sam's voice was fragile and he started hurrying to get off of his brother.

Four years of Dean sucking his cock and not letting Sam return the favor was starting to draw Sam to the only logical conclusion that his freakishly fast mind could come up with. A conclusion that Dean wished was true, one that would be normal and healthy and better for the both of them in the long run, hell, in the short run.

Touching your brother like this should have never even felt ok. But Dean wasn't ok; Dean had learned his lesson a long time ago that ok was an unreasonable expectation for life.

 _"Sam?_ " he responded, his needy plea matching his brother's for once.

But his brother had made up his mind that he'd been letting Dean sacrifice for him still. Dean could see it in his face, hard and determined. Just like their father.

"Fuck, Dean, you shouldn't have…" Sam rasped, "I thought… us… I didn't know… just me…"

" _Sam"_ Dean pleaded, rolling over onto his back and showing Sam the stiff proof between his legs that he needed to see. _"Sam"_ Dean whispered again, but he didn't need to since even in all the darkness of the motel room, he knew that Sam could always find him.

And Sam did.

Sam reached forward, stroking Dean's cock under the blankets of the motel bed, touching it for the first time. He tugged the sheets down like something in Dean's angry red cock was sacred and holy. He touched his nose, then his lips against the tender silken flesh. A tentative tongue flicked against its head and the world stopped spinning for a moment.

"Dean…" Sam whispered hesitantly, "Dean, I need… I want… fuck me?"

Dean shook his head 'no' before he even gave the idea much thought, or at least more thought than a late night shower fantasy. He'd had dreams of Sam bent over a bathroom sink, presenting himself to Dean, giving Dean the most intimate part of himself. But he wanted to protect Sam from that. Protect him from having to give himself away. Sam was beautiful and the only dirty thing about him was Dean. But Sam's cock was so hard against his thigh and his stupidly long hair was tangled in Dean's fists and Dean couldn't have stopped at a blow job if all the world depended on it. He rolled back over onto his stomach and got onto his knees, awkwardly kicking off his boxers and giving Sam everything he had to give.

"Dean?" Sam murmured, running a cautious hand over the swell of Dean's ass, his thumb cleaving between the cheeks, finding the hole. Dean couldn't speak because his entire body was trembling with nervousness and want and need, so he just nodded furiously, positive that he wouldn't be able to breathe until Sam's really big dick was all the way inside of him. This was the way it should be, Dean giving himself away to Sam.

"Dean… you've never..." Sam said as his index finger started tracing the tight entrance, "You've never done this before, have you?"

"No."

"But… I've seen you with guys. So that means that you've always been on top."

"I wish you hadn't seen that, Sammy." Dean sighed, tucking his head between his elbows, "Dad doesn't know, does he?"

"Probably not."

"Ok. That's ok. It's ok, Sam. Yeah. I always topped before."

"I've never… at all."

"I know, Sammy. It's ok."

"So maybe you should this time too?"

"No, Sam." How could Dean explain that? How could Dean explain that Sam was something goddamn near divine and if he ever did get onto his knees or back for a man, if he ever was a bottom, that it should be for someone almost as perfect as he was? Dean fucked whores in bathrooms. He would never forgive himself if he fucked Sam like that too. "No, do it like this… this way it's a first time for both of us."

Dean could have gone his whole life never having a dick up his ass, but this was the most effective way to get Sam on board. The older Sam got, the more furious he was every time he realized that Dean was sacrificing on his behalf. When he was a kid, Sam never realized that seconds of Cheerios meant that Dean didn't get some the next morning. Sam never realized that Dean hated ThunderCats and only watched it Sam loved them.

"Ok," Sam exhaled.

Dean was almost surprised at Sam's ability to restrain himself as the wet tip of Sam's dick trailed between his cheeks. When Sam hesitated, Dean realized that Sam was waiting for instruction. Funny how Sam took orders at this moment, but on a hunt, life and death, Sam questioned everything that came out of their dad's mouth. Now was really not the time to think about Dad.

"Lube," Dean said, "In my…"

But Sam was already across the room, digging through shaving lather and toothpaste, retrieving the tiny bottle. Dean felt especially stupid and vulnerable as he had his ass in the air on the cold bed, but before his logic kicked in, Sam was mercifully up against him again, his cock just as hard as it was a few seconds ago and Dean knew he could, he wanted, to go through with this.

"Lots of it, Sammy," Dean coached, "More than you ever thought you could want or need, loads of it."

Dean heard Sam's breathing, heard the tube squeeze, and heard Sam warm it between his fingers for him. Dean hadn't even remembered to ask Sam to do that. His thoughtful, genius brother was going to make some man very happy someday. There was yet another thought Dean didn't need to have right this second.

"Ok, one at a—" Dean gasped as an index finger breached him, barely to the first knuckle but his massive brother had some massive hands and Dean had never even had his own fingers up there.

"Are you OK?" Sam asked, "I'm sorry Dean, I'm just going to explode back here."

"Yeah, fine, just…" Dean swirled his hips to get used to the sensation, pushing them back to Sam's finger. "Ok, a second one, do the second—holy Jesus" he cried out as Sam obeyed him.

He could feel Sam hesitate. He could feel Sam's reluctance, like maybe he wasn't ready for this after all. Anal sex was a Big Deal and Dean could practically hear Sam thinking that it was too much. But Dean had two fingers in his ass and he would be damned if they stopped now. Actually, he probably would be literally damned to Hell if he went through with it. But if it gave Sam something he needed, Hell seemed a small price to pay. So he started jutting his ass against Sam's fingers, moaning, maybe a bit more than absolutely necessary. Sam still was unsure, so Dean grabbed Sam's hand and put it over his hard cock, jacking it with Sam's fingers. Emboldened, Sam scooted forward on his knees and slid the head of his dick against Dean's ass. He took some more of the lube and Dean heard him stroke it over himself and then pulled his fingers out.

Uh oh.

"Sam, Sammy, wait... I'm not read—"

Dean wasn't even sure that Sam heard him as he shoved his thick, hard, delicious, burning length into his ass. He stilled for a second too long and a second too little before he started pulling out, just to push into Dean again. And again. And one more time before something inside Sam snapped and his hips were no longer stroking but pumping, no longer exploring but claiming and Dean carded his fingers in the sheets and waited for it to be over with. Every thrust was another foreign inch of Sam's cock into his ass and Dean wanted to cry with the beauty and the pain of it.

He wasn't nearly stretched enough for this. Sam didn't use nearly enough lube. Dean forgot to remind Sam to use a condom because Dean was a filthy man whore and had learned the hard way that STDs were fucking rampant among people like beautiful Sam's dirty brother.

And just as Dean's erection started to flag, Sam hit that spot that Dean had only ever stroked but had never been stroked. Dean suddenly understood why any man would be a ok with bottoming 100% of the time. Dean's cry of surprise and ecstasy reminded Sam that Dean was down there and he reached forward and started working his brother in time with his thrusts.

"Love you, Dean. Love you, love you, love you, _loveyouloveyouloveyouloveyou_ …..Love. You." Sam panted before stilling and spilling his come all over Dean's ass and thighs.

It was a good thing that Dean got off on hearing Sam get off because his perfect brother completely forgot to jack him for those few seconds that Sam was driving the orgasm express. Dean hitched a ride with his brother's broken moan and both collapsed in a connected heap of muscles and hair.

"Love you Dean, love you so much." Sam sleepily whispered into Dean's hair.

And Dean fell in love with Sam in that moment.

So it was no longer Dean doing this with Sam because he loved his brother, it was because he was in love with his brother. Duty and sacrifice wouldn't soothe his conscience anymore. For Sam, always for Sam wouldn't cut it. Dean needed Sam, probably more than Sam needed Dean because Sam wasn't scarred and hateful. Sam still had sweet eyes and dreams of normal and ok and safe. Sam was beautiful.

And Dean was selfish for wanting that, for wanting to leech onto Sam and share in that beauty, that optimism that people were alright and the world wasn't such a terrible place and even in truck stop bathrooms and seedy motels with his kin wrapped around him in ways that blood should never touch, there was something beautiful and good. Dean knew better. He did, he really did. He knew he was contaminating Sam, because if it was something that made Dean happy, there was something wrong about it. That was the most fundamental difference between him and his brother; Sam was beautiful and Dean dirtied everything he touched.

***

The next morning, Dean was in the shower when Sam woke up. His cock was sinfully raw and his back was deliciously sore and all Sam wanted to do was fling open the motel bathroom and see Dean, wonderful, naked Dean in the morning light. Also, he kind of felt gross. Wonderfully gross, if that was a thing. His own come was flaking on the front of his thighs from spilling out of Dean's ass. He smelled like dried sweat from fucking into the man he loved. Wonderfully humanly disgusting. And then there was a little something else on his dick, he realized as he looked down his body at his sleepy little member. Dried lube wouldn't have that particular shade of…

Dried blood. Like the kind their dad scrubbed out of his coat in the bathroom sink. Sam scrambled out of bed throwing the blankets off and seeing the horrifying evidence on Dean's side of the bed. A spot here and there and then a very tiny but very distinct puddle. Where it pooled. As Dean slept. After Sam fucked his ass raw. Sam wanted to hurl. Sam wanted to hit himself for being so stupid.

"Dean!" Sam roared, terrified and furious, as he slammed his fist on the bathroom door. Why the fuck didn't Dean tell him to stop? "DEAN."

"Whoa, where's the fire?" asked Dean, opening the door and looking up at Sam with concerned eyes. Concern for Sam. After Sam did that. Sam's throat closed up and his eyes watered, he hated it when he cried. "Whoa, Sam, Sam" Dean murmured, pulling his little brother's head down to his shoulder. Stroking his hair, like he did when Sam was a kid and when he looked out for Sam.

"Don't, Dean." Sam barked, batting Dean's hand away. "I mean it, fucking stop it." He smacked Dean's hand in midair as it went back to stroke his face again.

"Sammy, I'm so sorry" Dean looked at the ground and Sam wanted to lift him off his feet and shake him.

"LOOK, Dean." Sam ordered, moving aside and pointing at the bed, the crime scene. Dean's eyes flicked over it once and then fell back on Sam's. He wasn't getting it. " _Why didn't you tell me to stop_?"

"It's just a little blood, Sam, it happens."

"It happens to _women_ , Dean. This means that I ripped your skin, it means that you could get an infection now. It means that I hurt you and you didn't tell me to stop." Sam's stomach dropped as Dean kept looking at the floor. No way. No way did Sam do… "You didn't tell me to stop, did you?" he whispered. "I mean, you didn't tell me no, right? I didn't just not hear, did I? I didn't rape—"

"Jesus, no, Sam. No. I'm a fucking adult, ok? And if I say it isn't a big deal, it isn't a big deal."

"You're my _brother,_ Dean. I love you." Sam whispered.

It shouldn't have sounded as wrong as it did. It shouldn't have held those connotations. It shouldn't have been silently followed with, _And I'm sorry if I hurt you while my dick was in your ass_. But it did. And Sam, really, truly, wasn't bothered by the fact that Dean was his brother. Not for a second. He realized that it made him different, that it made him a weirdo. But, he didn't like snow cones either. And he knew three different ways to kill a ghost. Sam's list of 'weird' was long and tedious and Dean was one of the few things that made him happy, so, no, he didn't care.

"Yeah, well it's my ass, so calm your tits." Dean snapped. Turning away and stepping back towards the shower. Exposing his tender red skin to Sam. Limping despite himself.

Sam wanted to yell. Sam wanted to cry. Sam wanted to pull his hair out because what the fuck was wrong with Dean that this could happen and Dean would just look at him with worry? What was wrong with Dean that he could be hurt and wounded and still have it in him to look out for Sam? Even when no one was looking out for him.

Just because someone thrust an infant into Dean's lap and told Dean that it was his responsibility to take care of it didn't mean that Dean didn't deserve to be taken care of. Sam had no idea what it was that made Dean think that the world didn't give a fuck about him. He had no clue why Dean seemed to think that leaving people, getting hurt, getting fucked bloody wasn't a big deal because it was.

If it was their father that made Dean feel like he was second class, then Sam hated their father. He hated him. And not for the moving. Not for the monsters. Not for the unending revenge for a corpse he couldn't remember, but because he did this to Dean.

But John Winchester couldn't be fully blamed for the atrocity that occurred the night before in his children's' motel room. Their dad may have made Dean that way, but Sam was the one who asked Dean for it. Sam was the one with the blood on his cock. He loved Dean, he loved his brother in every way that he shouldn't and Dean didn't tell him to stop. Dean never told him it was too much. And, Sam realized with disgust, Dean never would.

***

Sam Winchester had his bag slung over his shoulder. He had all the money he could muster in his pocket, three hundred dollars in small bills. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Enough for a bus ticket.

"You walk out that door, Sammy, don't you ever come back," John spat from the kitchen, his knuckles white on the counter, his breathing short and measured like a bull before the charge. He thought Sam was bluffing again.

Dean was beside their father, the coordinates of a hunt lying out and open on the table. It was a night like eighteen years of those before it except for this. Except Sam's bag was full this time. Except Sam had a plan this time. Sam couldn't meet Dean's eyes, though he should have. This was for Dean.

"Fine." Said Sam, calm and cool, just like he had rehearsed in his head a thousand times. "Fine. I'll never see you again, and you can just die alone and bitter with your hunt. You always just wanted to be alone and bitter with your hunt, didn't you, Dad?"

It was mean. It was the meanest thing Sam had in his arsenal, but Sam was fucking done with guilt trips and duty to a memory that he didn't even possess.

The door was louder this time, he was sure of it. It was louder as it slammed behind him, as if it knew that things would never be the same again.

Sam circled around the house, standing in the woods so that he could just barely see his brother and his father through the window as they watched the front door slam. He could see their father counting in his head, _"five, four, three, two…"_ All those other times, this was when Sam would walk back in, tail between his legs, slinking up to his room. Sam watched John gave Dean a nervous look. _" five, four, three, two…"_ Still nothing. They should have listened to the front door as it screamed to them, _"No, this it. This is really it. Go after him if you want to keep him, you idiots."_ But Sam was old enough to know that his father would never change. Old men never do.

Through the dirty window of the by-the-week rental cabin, Sam saw John jerk his head at Dean. His father had learned a long time ago that Dean was the only one who had a popsicle's chance of keeping Sam there. Sam stood still and silent, knew that Dean would find him. Dean could always find Sam in the dark.

"What's up, Sam?" Dean whispered as he reached out, a cautious hand against a wounded animal. But Sam was free now.

He laughed at Dean's understatement. _What's up? I'm free, Dean. I'm free, for once. Finally._

"Come back inside, Sam," Dean scolded, but Sam could see the panic. Dean could tell things were different this time.

"No." It wasn't mean. It wasn't sad. It just was.

"Sam, I get it, I do, come back inside."

"No, Dean."

"Sam—"

"I'm ditching my phone. And… I'm going off the grid. Even our 'off the grid' grid."

"Don't be stupid, Sammy, how could we find you?"

"I don't want you to find me. I know that you and Dad will track me down one day. But I hope that you leave him before that happens." Dean looked back up to the kitchen window, he watched their father wringing his hands together. Watched him rumple his hands against his hair and keep looking back at the front door as if his sons were right on the other side of it, as if nothing was different.

"Take me with you." Dean suddenly pleaded. Changing his tactic, trying to throw Sam off his game, "We can leave together."

"I'm leaving you both."

Dean reeled back like Sam had punched him.

"Dean, you're not happy like this. Not with me. Not with Dad. You don't want me the way I need you. You never will. You deserve… you deserve something else, ok? I deserve something else. As long as you and I are together… we'll always be like this. As long as we're us we'll always be hiding."

"Then we won't stop, Sam. We can keep doing this. I don't care. I don't."

"No, Dean. I don't care. Would you quit treating me like a kid? I know that you want it, want people. Friends. Dad. I can't spend the rest of my life making you lie to them, hurting you when they find out because, honestly Dean, one day they'll find out. Maybe not anytime soon, but in ten years? Twenty years? We're toxic together. I'm just going to pick a side of the country and you pick another and we just won't anymore."

"You're being fucking selfish, Sam. I need you."

"For the first time, I'm not being selfish, Dean."

"Take me with you. Take me with you."

"Goodbye, Dean."

"Sam, Sam, SAM." Dean cried as Sam turned away.

Sam cried too. Sam cried as he walked away from Dean. He never thought he'd actually be able to do it. Never thought he'd be able to have Dean practically throw himself at his feet and be able to walk away, but he did.

There was a reason that incest was taboo. There was a reason that every society in the world abhorred it. It was this. It was people falling so co-dependently into each other that they couldn't function. Sure, normal people could look at their lover and say that that person was their everything. But it was like saying that their lover was the sun. Beautiful, poetic and yet entirely unrealistic, and with good reason. Most people had family or friends in their lives as well, their love wasn't all in one fragile, fucked up basket. But with Sam and Dean, it was and it always would be. Sam's guardian, his brother, his best friend and the love of his life were literally all concentrated in the same single soul. Sam only wanted Dean, only needed Dean, and that was terrifying. They couldn't just stop, they would never be able to just stop.

What would the future look like for Sam and Dean, lovers and brothers? Date night to the movies? Dinner parties with the neighbors? Kids? No. They'd have to hide. They'd have to hide who they were to each other, to the world all the time. Their hunting friends would reject them fast enough. They already knew that Sam and Dean were both Winchesters. What would they say when they found out that that their genetic make-up made them share the same hair color and their love made them share the same bed?

What about when they tried to settle into civilian life? When people started asking questions about their childhoods, their relatives? What then? And kids? Adoption processes were brutal and lengthy and a quick internet search could unearth that they shared the same parents. And their father? What would he say and do when he found out that his sons were doing something so horrid right under his nose? Sam didn't mind John hating him, but he knew that Dean wouldn't be able to stomach it.

Sam didn't need people. Not really. He was fine on his own. There was enough shit between him and the world to keep him locked out. Sam wanted a roof over his head, he wanted a steady income and he wanted to sleep in the same bed with the same things around him every night. Sam wanted a home, the rest was sentimental. When Sam envisioned the future, he didn't always envision someone in the bed beside him. It was nice idea; after all, no one wanted to die alone. He wouldn't avoid it, but if that part of his life never fell into place, it wouldn't be all that bad.

Dean was twenty-one and a master of denial. He lived his life like an alcoholic, one day at a time, and Sam was pretty sure Dean didn't think he would live long enough to make a family, one that didn't fight, one that didn't leave in the middle of the night. One that didn't beg for him or fuck him bloody. It didn't even occur to his brother to entertain the notion of settling down, but Sam could see it in him. The father that their father never was. All soothing words and band aids over scraped knees. A tiny hand gripping his finger, his heart-stopping green eyes given to a tiny little person that he could love and not have it be this mess that Sam put him in. Dean didn't want a house or a career but something much more substantial. Dean wanted a family. He just couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel that their father had led them down.

Dean wanted friends and family and connections to people. Ultimately it was their most fundamental difference. If Dean was with Sam, he was only with Sam forever and ever and Sam could never do that to Dean. So this he did for Dean, always for Dean. For once in his whole existence, Sam was giving Dean something. He was giving Dean his freedom.

It was one of the happiest moments of his life


	2. Stanford

Sam had been expecting some level of culture shock when he showed up at the Stanford dorms. Of course, Sam had expected it to come in the form of paranoia: seeing things in the shadows, hearing ghosts in the night, feeling chills in classrooms where there was nothing more dangerous than a hung-over student. And of course, he had expected to miss Dean. Dean had been his life before he left and now Sam was alone and having to pretend to be normal on a completely unprecedented scale.

Freshmen orientation week was an exercise in torture. Everyone he met asked the same question, Where are you from? They did it in that polite, small talk way, but Sam hated it. He had to come up with some lie every time someone asked it. At first he would answer here and there, without realizing that growing up on the road was the single most fascinating thing that these kids had heard all week. So then he started saying Lawrence, Kansas which was both the most honest and dishonest answer of them all.

Technically, he was born in Kansas, but he left before he was even enrolled in grade school. Their dad would drive an extra three hours off the interstate to avoid the city and he never talked about their home. Ever.

The Kansas thing worked for a while at least, until he bumped into someone who was actually from Lawrence and that conversation had totally sucked. So Sam had to try and guess who he was talking to, had to gauge their accent, their body language, their personality before choosing which lie to whip out. It was much more work than awkward small talk warranted. But, generally the Kansas thing was just boring enough for whoever was talking to him to smile sympathetically and move on to asking about his major.

Sam was much more comfortable talking about who he wanted to be than talking about who he was.

He had friends now, which was weird and uncomfortable, but kind of nice, he guessed. He had never been held accountable to anyone besides his father and his brother, but now he had virtual strangers expecting him to meet them for coffee, for study group, to watch a movie or get high. They wanted to be around him, even when he wasn't very funny or interesting. They always invited him to play pick up games and they always sat next to him in class.

He had never been very close to having friends before, maybe because a part of him knew that he would just have to leave them and maybe because he was always waiting for Dean. Waiting for Dean to pick him up after school, after soccer practice, after the library. He was always waiting for Dean to take him into the Impala and eat with him and even hold him in the night when Sam hurt for it so much he thought he was going to die.

But here were people who genuinely thought he was funny. People who wanted to be with him for him and not just for some fucked up idea of duty. Some of them, a flatteringly large amount, actually, wanted to _be_ with him, be with him.

But Sam never really cared about that, or craved that kind of affection, even without Dean's mouth or ass getting him off when the itch came along. But he realized that normal people did. He left his Dad and Dean to give Dean some shot at 'normal' so Sam decided it was worth a chance, too.

His name was Brady.

He was in Sam's legal writings course and he laughed a little too loud and he made eye contact a little too much for Sam to believe that he didn't want him. He was nice looking, clever as hell and pre-med.

Sam had always just assumed that he was gay. In reality, he'd simply never felt what he felt for Dean for anyone else, not even fractionally. A few girls, here and there, even a soft kiss with a kitsune at a tender, confusing age, but compared to the way Dean made Sam burn up inside, they were hardly blips on the hormonal radar. Sam wasn't sure that he believed people were capable of loving both men and women. Fucking both? Sure, why not, Dean did it everyday, but loving both? No; there was a side and you picked it. Sam loved Dean. Dean was brave and brilliant and sexy beyond question and Sam had never given anyone else much more than a second glance.

Sam liked watching Dean's muscular shoulders flex as he swallowed Sam down. Sam liked the deep voice and the big hands and the roughness that he was allowed when he was intimate with another man. It might have just been Dean. It probably was just Dean. Dean was a hurricane of sex, but Sam was in the desert, so he made do with what he had.

And Brady was nice looking.

It happened at a frat party, since Brady was the frat's token fag, as he liked to refer to himself with a raised plastic red cup and a grin. Brady had been drinking, and he generally got extra boisterous when he drank, with winks and lewd comments and suggestive eyebrow waggling.

Sam wasn't very drunk, but he followed Brady away from their group of friends anyways.

Their friends weren't stupid, they knew where Sam was going and they all gave collective, whispers behind his back, surprised but all a little relieved that they had pinned him down, finally. On his best day, a "normal" Sam was still close-lipped and cautious. An in-the-closet kid made much more sense. He wasn't a freak anymore; he was poor gay Sam. His family wasn't a mystery anymore; they were a bunch of right wing assholes who didn't accept him. He didn't say a word, he didn't come out of the closet to a single soul, but the imaginations of ivy league students with some weed and a little gossip did all the heavy lifting for him.

Their Dad had always taught him that the best lies were the ones they didn't even have to tell. Letting people assume what they were going to assume was always the easiest way to go. People liked to think that they had figured it out, all on their own. It was almost polite to let them keep thinking it.

Brady didn't even need any prompting to drop onto his knees the second that Sam had ushered him into the bathroom. Sam braced himself against the sink as Brady unzipped and unfastened him then went to town on his cock, moaning and slurping like Sam's dick was the first one he'd ever tasted.

He wasn't bad at it. He was a little too loud and over the top for Sam's tastes. Brady's muffled moans and sighs sounded hollow and harsh against the tiled bathroom. They were nothing like the soft symphony of noises that he had heard with Dean, a thousand sounds otherwise lost to the world but made deafening in the silence of their motel room. The preluding sigh of his bed as Dean climbed into it, followed by the soft chorus of sheets moving, accommodating and revealing Sam's most vulnerable places in his most exposed and needy state. Then would come the crescendo of breaths, panted and quiet; Dean's as he picked up speed, breathing heavily through his nose so that he never wrenched his lips from Sam's desperation and Sam's panting as he rose higher and higher, as Dean's lips and tongue and sheer beauty took him higher and higher. But Brady was enthusiastic if nothing else, and that sort of compliment was arousing in its own right.

It was wrong. Brady wasn't wrong, Brady was being a real trooper down there, giving Sam everything he had in his porn archived repertoire. Brady was a consenting, adult partner who had been drooling over Sam for months and it was wrong.

Dean was slower, at first at least. Dean would spend minutes luxuriously salving the head of his cock, kissing up the length, twisting it in his hand, touching everything between Sam's legs from his balls to the little hole that Dean would play with—though never penetrate. Dean was Dean and Brady wasn't Dean and that was what was wrong. It was, actually, right and healthy, but it was wrong.

After fifteen long, laborious minutes of Brady working his dick like it was some sort of miracle, Sam ran his fingers through Brady's hair and guided him up. Brady stood, confused, hurt, probably sore, and Sam closed his eyes, leaned forward, and kissed him.

Brady opened his mouth up to him, willing to suck face if it would get Sam with the program, but Sam just ran his fingers though Brady's hair and kept playing between their lips, without any sense of urgency. After a while, Brady relaxed and joined along with the chaste kissing game, all lips and pressure and gentle nibbles, but no tongue.

It was nice. Sam had never kissed Dean, one of the few lines that Dean actually kept uncrossed, so with Brady it was different. When he didn't compare it to Dean, it wasn't so bad.

Because nothing would measure up to Dean and Sam just had to learn to live with that. No one in this life, this "normal" life would ever know him as well as Dean did. No one would ever touch him like Dean did, or smell like Dean did or sound like Dean did. Dean was gone. Sam gave Dean that and it wouldn't be fair to either of them if Sam couldn't stick to his promises.

So he would make Brady right. He would kiss Brady and make Brady something special.

The kiss was heating up and Sam felt Brady cupping his crotch again, running his fingers over Sam's cock, trying to keep it hard. Brady slipped his leg between Sam's longer ones and started grinding them together, his hands gripping at Sam's ass, his need for Sam intense and unrelenting against Sam's thigh.

After a couple of minutes, Sam broke from their kiss, which was progressing from nibbles to bites and passion and pulled away. A moment of worry flickered across Brady's face before Sam dropped to his knees and pulled Brady out.

"Oh, God, yes." Brady murmured and looked down at Sam like he was the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on.

Dean was thicker than Brady. Dean smelled different, less intense. Maybe it was because Sam and Dean had lived together for their whole lives, had done laundry together and used the same bath products that Dean's smell was comforting, not offensive. But Brady didn't smell bad. Just musky and foreign, Sam could get used to it. Sam would make himself get used to it.

Sam mimicked Brady's technique rather than Dean's; harsh and fast rather than savoring. Sam could only assume that Brady sucked cock like he liked having his cock sucked. Sam lavished a half dozen firm strokes of his tongue against Brady's dick, lubricating it before he started to pump him with his hand. Precome was already pearling out of Brady's slit, so Sam knew that he was close. He wrapped his mouth around Brady as far as he could, then sucked him and jacked him at the same time. Brady's head was thrown back, moaning and crying so loudly that Sam was sure they could hear it outside. He was hamming it up like a B list porn star and Sam was turning pink around the ears as Brady made his pleasure known to whoever happened to be walking by. But Sam had a cock in his mouth and he was pretty committed at this point.

It was mercifully fast, and Brady gave him plenty of warning, _"Fuck, yes, fuck, yes, fuck, so fucking—yes, I'm coming. I'm coming so hard, yes!"_

Sam took it like a man and swallowed to be polite. Dean always swallowed.

Except that first time. That first time when he threw it up and hid from Sam for the rest of the night. That first time that Dean hadn't looked at Sam or touched him until the second time. The second time when Sam had whispered his name into the night and Dean had given a long, sad sigh before climbing in and giving himself to Sam.

Sam had always taken everything from Dean. Sam had taken seconds of dinner when there was barely enough for two in the first place. It was always Sam who took the last of the orange juice or finished the tube of toothpaste and Dean never said a word. Dean never mentioned that there were two growing boys in the family, since he was only a little older than Sam, after all. Dean never spoke up so Sam didn't realize that he had been taking more than his fair share until he was too old to go back in time and fix all his oblivious greed. Dean would give Sam a blowjob, Dean would even bend over and let Sam fuck him, but that was because Sam, not Dean had needed it. It was just Dean giving Sam more than his fair share all over again. Dean had been so beautiful before Sam started wanting him, and taking him with all the selfish entitlement of a child.

Brady grinned then dropped down to his knees and reached out to finally finish Sam off, but Sam was soft now and he didn't think he would be able to muster up the enthusiasm to match Brady's for another blowjob.

So he smiled sadly, muttered something sheepish about too much to drink and pulled away. They both tucked themselves back into their pants quietly. Brady washed his mouth out with some mouthwash he kept in his pocket. He generously offered Sam a swig, which he took gratefully.

As he watched Brady gargle the Listerine, Sam decided that Brady was sweet. Brady was thoughtful and vivacious and he was perfect.

For someone else.

To Sam, he would always be just nice. Brady caught him staring and gave him an exaggerated wink, though the suggestiveness was gone. They'd already seen more of each other than most people saw. What was left?

Brady offered to let Sam go out first. As Brady opened the door for him, Sam leaned forward and kissed him again. Brady just let him. Brady let him because they had just had oral sex and for most, healthy, normal relationships, the two went hand in hand.

Brady could be Sam's 'normal.' Brady could be the one that Sam kissed and wanted and taught himself to love. Brady was perfect for everyone else, so why not Sam? Sam tried to love Brady, he really did, even before whatever it was in Brady that cracked. Even before Brady fell apart, Sam tried to love him. Brady was nice, even when he was wrecked. Brady kissed him even when he was a mess.

It was nice, but it wasn't Dean. Dean never broke.

***

Dean's sexual promiscuity made much more sense once Sam got acquainted with the gay sex community. What happens when you put good looking, intelligent, unattached gay men together in a school campus? Lots of anonymous sex. Loads of it. Everywhere. And most of the participants weren't exactly eager to settle down.

It was the their sophomore year that something snapped in Brady. Frat house bathrooms wouldn't cut it anymore, Brady needed to be out in clubs at parties every night. Brady wasn't drinking for fun anymore; he was drinking to prove a point. He wasn't just hooking up with a couple of boys; he was clearly determined to blow every gay man in Palo Alto and as many of the straight ones that he could manage before his face was beaten into a pulp.

And Sam let himself be led along on Brady's wild bender because Brady insisted and something about watching a man screw and drink himself into oblivion struck a nostalgic note in Sam.

He had learned to stay out of the bathrooms if Brady was in there, just in case Brady was snorting something or sucking someone. He had learned to steal Brady's keys at the beginning of the night otherwise a sloppy, drunken wrestling match would ensue which almost always ended with Brady's half hard dick against his thigh and Brady's lips at his mouth moaning, c'mon, baby. Lets break in the back seat of that car. As if Sam hadn't seen him break it in with a half dozen twinks before.

Sam wasn't really worried, not until the end, at least. He had seen Dean go through at least three of these same benders. Out all night, coming home smelling like sex and cheap alcohol just as dawn peeked under the doorframe. The first of these that Sam could remember started the night of his thirteenth birthday. But Dean would be out for a week, maybe two, spending the day hungover, sometimes nursing a cigarette, before disappearing again around Happy Hour. Then Dean would be back to being Dean and no one would talk about it. Sam should have learned by now; there was Dean, and then there was the rest of the world.

Maybe because Sam hadn't learned his lesson, or perhaps precisely because he had, he followed along with Brady, telling himself that he liked Brady and that his wonderfully idiotic and self destructive friend couldn't get into too much trouble with Sam in tow. Brady started bringing Sam along to the gatherings with cute boys falling over themselves to hit on Sam. And they all did, sooner or later. At one party or dinner or movie night or another, someone's hand would be on his thigh, their eyes would search his for some cue and he knew that all of them were more than willing to wrap their lips around him, hell, probably bend over for him, because he was big and he worked out and he said 'no' most of the time. All of the time, actually. Besides the night with Brady in the frat house, Sam had been perfectly content on his own. He had always been perfectly content on his own. What he had with Dean was something eternal and obsessive and beautiful in all its filthy shame. Sam would never share that with anyone else, and he probably would hate himself if he did.

After a few months, Brady noticed his celibacy and pulled Sam aside at a party after Vincent, a pretty Asian boy, struck out with Sam again.

"Sorry about him, you know how he gets when he takes E." Brady started. Sam laughed and swiped his hand in the air, dismissing the apology.

"I think I can handle myself if he gets a little handsy. What is he, a hundred pounds wet?"

"Some of them gotta diet to keep that twink figure. Keep themselves lookin good."

Sam chuckled before taking another sip of his – whatever was in his cup—Brady thought of himself as a great bartender, but he really just put shots of everything into a cup with cranberry juice. It went over well with the gay scene crowd who liked to get plastered quickly and didn't much mind how. Sam had mastered the ability to not grimace when he took a sip in front of his friend.

Brady narrowed his eyes before looking around to see if anyone could hear them.

"Twinks not your thing?" asked Brady. Sam shrugged. Brady looked him over, "Not Twinks? Circuit? Drag Queens? Bears?"

Sam actually spit out a bit of the sickly sweet drink as Brady said that. Sam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he laughed, shaking his head, 'no.'

"Jocks?" he asked, "Yeah, you're a regular gym rat. You got some little thing with a trainer or something? Get a happy ending with your work out?"

"Really, Brady, what does it matter?"

"I worry about you 'sall." Said Brady, leaning in and stroking his hands up Sam's thighs, tucking his thumbs into the folded dent where Sam's crotch was. Brady leaned up and kissed Sam, chewed his bottom lip, flicked his tongue over Sam's closed mouth. Sam let him, even leaned into him a bit since the warmth and affection was comforting. Brady pulled away and looked at Sam with narrowed eyes. "You're pining for someone, aren't you? I thought so. Some ex-boyfriend you left behind? Someone waiting for you at home?"

Sam must have drank more than he intended because he felt his eyes mist over and he looked over Brady's head to the dredges of the party, most of their friends having already hooked up or moved on by that time. Sam hated it when he cried.

"No one is waiting for me. I haven't got a home," He whispered and Brady made a soothing 'shhh' sound and tucked Sam's head into his shoulder, stroking Sam's hair.

It wasn't Dean. It was wrong.

Sam pulled away, but Brady was looking at him so sympathetically and, to be fair, Sam was probably drunk.

"I… He and I can't be together. We can never be together. They don't… They'll all hate us. They'll all abandon us."

"Your family?"

"Everyone. Everyone everywhere." Sam said, trying in vain to stop the tears. He hated that he was crying. He hated that he was blubbering to a stranger about secrets too dark for his own father.

"Then they're assholes. Seriously, fuck them. You should love who you're going to love. They can go shove a rod up their ass. No one has any right to make you hate yourself. If they can't accept you, they didn't really love you anyways."

"But he loves them too. He needs them. I don't care but… it would break his heart. It would kill him if they hated him. We can never be happy together. Never."

"This boy did quite a number on you. What was his name?"

"Dean. His name was Dean." That was stupid. Why did Sam do that?

"Dean, huh?" asked Brady, scratching his chin, "He sounds like a real heartbreaker. He your first?"

"My only."

"Wanna change that tonight?" Brady asked, swooping back in and kissing Sam on the mouth.

And Sam didn't know why he relented, but Sam cupped Brady's face and took control of the kiss. He pried Brady's lips apart with his, stood from the barstool and flipped them so that Brady was pinned to the bar, completely at Sam's mercy.

Despite the sudden violence, Brady was recovering at record speed and doing everything in his power to meet Sam, fire for fire.

Dean had fucked a thousand girls and probably as many boys. They weren't too good for Dean, but Dean always treated Sam like glass. Like Sam was something fragile and sweet that couldn't be soiled or broken. Dean always kept Sam at arms length, even when, especially when Sam was balls deep in him. Even when Sam was rutting up against his thigh, Dean never lost control.

Sam had fucking seen Dean with girls, heard him panting, begging, pleading, calling them baby, kissing them so hard so fast so desperate. So needy. Dean was so needy in the arms of a thousand other bodies. But Dean didn't need Sam like Sam needed Dean. Dean didn't need Sam like he needed all those girls in the dark, when he thought Sam was asleep or couldn't hear them from the room. If Sam was so damn precious, why didn't Dean love him like that? Sam was a man, a fucking man, and he wanted to be treated like one.

If only Dean could see him now, rubbing up into another guy, late at night in a not-quite-empty apartment off campus. If only Dean could see his beautiful Sammy on his knees for some other guy. Taking up the ass for some other guy.

That was a wonderfully intoxicating train of thought, Dean, somehow knowing that Sam wasn't a kid, he wasn't a treasure to be protected but a man who knew what he wanted and how he wanted it. A man who wanted to be used.

But Dean would never see Sam. Dean would never see Sam like that because Sam had asked him not to. Sam had asked Dean to try something as close to normal as he could get. Sam had set Dean free to have the family that the three of them never were, to create the home that Sam always wanted for all of them.

Dean would never see this, never see Sam happy or grown or loved. Because Sam had given Dean that clear conscience.

Dean had always made sacrifice look so beautiful. No one warned Sam that it would feel like dying, like drowning, like poison boiling in his gut whenever he thought of Dean. No one warned him that it would never stop aching whenever he thought of Dean and the life they would never have together.

Brady's hands were down his pants now, gripping his ass, searching through folds of fabric for that part of him. A finger found it, small and tight but there and fluttering in response to the heat and touch.

Sam finally wrenched himself from their blur of hands and bodies.

Wrong. It was wrong. It was supposed to be Dean but it would never be Dean and Sam had wanted it that way all along. Would Sam ever feel normal or would he always have Dean in the back of his mind?

"Can't…" he panted, apologetically. He really was sorry. Brady was perfect, even in all his hot mess glory.

"You sure?" Brady pleaded, his voice was still broken, his breath still short, he cupped Sam's dick again, smiling at the hardness of it. "C'mon baby. Please?"

"I'm really sorry," Sam shook his head.

Brady rubbed his fingers across his lips, swollen as they were from Sam's ministrations. "You're kind of a romantic, you know that?" Sam snorted with disbelief. "You like to kiss. You fall in love. You know, I've never had the privilege. You'll probably tell me it's a burden though, won't you? All the boys with the broken hearts always do"

"No…No, it fucking sucks, but I've never wished I felt different. Even the bad isn't bad enough to take away the good. I just wish that it had never been so hard for him. He's beautiful, you know?"

"If he's worth your time, I'm sure he is." Said Brady with a wry smile, "You're special, you know that, Sam? You're a goddamn miracle on legs. Don't ever let them change you."

"Thanks, Brady. You're real special too."

"I know, right?" Brady asked, "But I'm no Dean. C'mon, get all cleaned up. Let's get your drunk ass home. I want you good and sober for tomorrow night."

"What's tomorrow night, again?"

"A little shindig with some pre-med students. We're gonna convert you, Sammy, great mind like that is a damn waste behind a desk."

"Better spent behind a clipboard, is it?" Sam asked with a laugh, relieved to fall back into the easy and familiar argument. Pre-med versus pre-law, the eternal rivalry.

"Now you're getting it!" Brady grinned, looping his arm around Sam's neck. "Besides, I want you to meet my friend."

"Uh-oh. Is this a circuit 'friend,' a twink 'friend,' or a bear 'friend?'"

"Would you get your mind out of the gutter? It's a lady friend. You can go ahead and wipe that shocked look of your face. I have lady friends. This one's name is Jess."


	3. Jess

Sam didn't even know that he was living in black and white until he met Jess. Then, suddenly, he was in Oz and the world was Technicolor.

Hanging out with friends had always been something that Sam had to force himself to do, like a work-out on a day that he was just plumb tired. As always, he did it. He found that the burn of his abs the next day or the smiling faces of his peers was a pleasant reminder that he was being who he wanted to be. But he had never craved attention from anyone quite the way he started to crave it from Jess. That is, he never craved attention from anyone besides Dean the way he craved it from Jess.

With Dean it had been all dark motel rooms and muffled noises but with Jess it was light. Sam could never decide if it was her shampoo or highlights but somehow Jess' hair shined with a luminosity all it's own. It smelled like the simple lazy sunshine of summer and lemon grass and even when it was knotted and mussed, it looked as soft as silk against her pillow.

Sam's time with Jess became an exercise in _not_ sex. They would lay on her bed, touching each other's arms, stroking each other's fingers with their own, exploring the mazes and long, silky jungles of each other's hair with their fingertips, marveling in the warmth, but not sex. Sam never pressured and Jess never offered and somehow it was better that way. Sam knew, abstractly, that sex didn't have to be shameful and secret like it was with Dean. Sam wanted Dean, Sam pressured Dean and even though Sam didn't have to do much, it was obvious that their sexual relationship was one sided. Dean probably could have gone their whole lives without ever reaching across that line and making a mess where there had been blissfully simple, platonic, brotherly love.

But Sam seemed to have a special sort of knack for leaving messes.

Brady had not taken Sam's new friendship with Jess great. He had introduced them at the crushing party off campus, proudly claiming her as the only reason he ever passed Organic Chemistry before pulling Sam away to meet someone else. But Brady, being Brady, started his nightly ritual of drinking until he couldn't see straight and Sam gravitated towards Jess and Jess gravitated towards Sam and that bugged Brady for some reason. He grabbed Sam wordlessly by the wrist the fourth time he found Sam and Jess by the carrot sticks and Sam only had time to wave as Brady dragged him to the apartment they shared.

Sam had been getting a glass of water that night when he suddenly felt Brady's hard body against his back, his breath on his neck and his hands on his hips. Sam knew what would happen the moment he heard Brady's footsteps behind him but still felt a twinge of guilt as Brady slipped his hands beneath the waistband of his sweatpants, stroking, palming, touching Sam's cock, trying to get him hard, trying to prove something.

"Wanna double your sexual history tonight?" Brady whispered against his ear. Sam felt Brady's cock against his ass as it searched for the groove between his cheeks. "I can make you feel so good, baby, just let me make you feel good."

Sam supposed that if he stopped thinking about Dean and lies and the life he committed himself to, he might be able to get it up. If he turned off his brain he could probably let Brady do as he was promising, as he was begging. But Sam had never been the one who was good at turning his brain off; Dean had. Had Dean just turned his brain off like that for him three years, a lifetime, ago? Brady rutted against his back, locking Sam where he was and Sam let him, looking down at the ripples in his water glass that Brady made as pumped against him and tried to make whatever point he was trying to make. With a sputtering breath and a sigh, Brady went limp against Sam's back and Sam could feel a sticky wetness leaking from Brady's boxers to the back of his thighs. Brady spun Sam around and started to lower to his knees before Sam grabbed him by the chin and kissed him softly. Brady glanced down at Sam's barely mentionable arousal and smiled stiffly before returning the kiss then stepping back, realizing that he had been dismissed.

Brady wasn't Sam's boyfriend and besides two other incidents, Sam and Brady hadn't done much in the way of sex. The first had been in Brady's car. Brady had smelled like sex and vodka, but he grabbed Sam's crotch as Sam drove them both home. It was hardly the first time; the zipper of Sam's pants was clearly the only thing that Brady could find with laser accuracy when he was as drunk as he was that night. But Brady was so fucked up, so royally destroyed and broken that Sam had relented. Brady was his friend, but maybe Sam liked him more as wrecked as he was. Maybe Sam harbored some insane fantasy where he was the cure, not the cause, to one, just one, of these familiar missions to self-destruct.

"Sammy," Brady had moaned, touching himself with the hand that wasn't mapping the topography of Sam's lap. And then Sam was pulling into the parking lot of a KFC and shoving his hand into Brady's pants, feeling his friend's cock, awkwardly shuffling around denim. "So good, Sammy. Need you. Need you, Sammy, god, Sammy, please." Brady came in Sam's mouth again, then fell asleep with his hand cupping Sam's soft dick. It didn't matter; Sam had never even gotten fully hard.

The second time had been in Brady's room. They had been watching a movie in the dark, Sam sitting on the floor, his back against the bed while Brady smoked pot on the mattress. About forty minutes in, Sam could feel Brady getting restless. A hand fell against his face, guiding his head back before his mouth was engulfed. Brady tasted like skunk and Sam never understood why he smoked it so much. But suddenly Brady was on him, kissing him and sliding his clothes over his torso, determined to get a literal rise out of him. It didn't happen, but Sam let Brady rub up against his thigh anyways, watching the movie over Brady's shoulder as his friend fucked his leg, stoking his hair, soothing, almost. After all, Sam knew how it felt to need this closeness. He just didn't need it with Brady.

Before Jess, Sam had always answered Brady's texts. He always met with Brady after class and sipped his soda water while watching Brady get plastered as he pre-gamed for a big night out. It didn't matter which night it was. Brady had started going out seven nights a week. And Brady clung to Sam and Sam let him because Brady's destruction was the only thing that made Sam feel like he wasn't living in some sleeping state of normal, or like it was Groundhog Day; same people, same places, same classes, same bed.

Then there was Jess and, looking back, Sam realized that it was all the same. She would text him and he would drop what he was doing and go over to her apartment. It was the same place, small but cozy. Watercolor poppies on her curtains and a few dozen ferns in the windowsill. She was in Sam's arms when she followed his gaze to the plants. Somehow she always seemed to gravitate to his arms, not kissing, not groping, just in his embrace, breathing his air and wrapping him up in the smell of sunshine and lemon grass. He clung to her and she let him. He was never really sure why.

She followed his gaze to the plants and smiled that smile that made her little mole by her eye get lost in the golden curls of her bangs as her eyes crinkled. Sam could tell you every crease and fold of her skin as she smiled. She said that she had a soft spot for the ferns that the flower shops put out by the dumpsters. If given a chance, they could thrive, but no one bought a fern to save it. They liked the ferns that were already healthy, they liked clean beautiful perfection but hated to put any effort in themselves. The ferns were better this way, Jess decided, they had been dirty and doomed but now they were bright and strong with life.

Sam laughed at the image of Jess digging around dumpsters to save thin, spiny plants, but there they were, sitting proudly in their love in their new home on her windowsill. That was the night that all of Brady's calls went to voicemail.

"You were with Jess, huh?" asked Brady the next morning as they drank coffee in the kitchen. Sam had just woken up, Brady had just gotten in. Something in Brady's thin tone made Sam pause. His friend's knuckles were white on the table.

"Yeah, been over there a lot lately." Said Sam, trying to read Brady's face, "Who'd you end up with last night? Vincent? Is he as flexible as everyone says?"

"You know I'd rather be with you, right?"

"You're with me right now, Brady."

"I mean… Not just jacking each other off or blow jobs or any of that stuff. Like, I could not be with other guys if that's what you wanted. I could just be with you."

"I couldn't ask you to do that, Brady."

"Ok. But you're not in love with Jess, are you?"

"No." Sam didn't know why he lied.

"I mean, if you were going to love one of us, it'd be me, right?"

"What does it matter, Brady? Do you love me?"

"Is that what you want?"

"That isn't what you're supposed to say." Sighed Sam, "I think you're still a little drunk. You're going to class today, right?"

Brady waved a lazy hand through the air and Sam grabbed his shoulder as his roommate went to crash in his room.

"We've got that final in the writings course. Don't forget, ok?"

"Have I ever forgotten before?"

Sam shook his head let Brady go, but now that Brady was looking at him, he stepped forward and grabbed Sam by the hips, pulling him in. Brady's eyes searched his face for a moment before his lips ghosted over Sam's. Brady kept his eyes open and watching Sam before Sam eased away and turned back to the kitchen counter. Brady touched his own lips before giving a last, lost look at Sam and going into his room.

Brady didn't show up to class.

***

Sam was laying on Jess' bed, fully clothed while she sat at the head of the bed with a book in her lap and a study guide on the bed next to him.

"I can't study with you here." She announced finally. Sam didn't notice the silence until she spoke. Sam could listen to her silence for the rest of his life. He rolled over, propping himself up on his arm as he looked at her.

"You invited me over to study. Do you want me to go?"

"No."

"Do you want me to help?"

"They're my finals for class. My medical class. You can't habeas corpus this stuff, it actually matters after all." She was teasing him. She was smiling that smile that he could sketch with his eyes closed. It still gave him butterflies.

"Well, clearly you know what I do." He said, returning her smile. She placed a slender finger into the dimple on his cheek and it seemed like a perfectly fair trade. He would smile forever if she would touch him forever. A hand on his cheek. A finger in his dimple and he was thickening just a little being close to her. He could spend eternity on her sheets, with her mapping his face with feather touches. He reached into her lap and pulled her study sheet from her.

"You didn't tell me you had an anatomy portion of the test." Jess blushed and made a reach for the paper which Sam easily held out of her arm's length on the other side of the bed. "I can help with that."

"How could you possibly help with that?"

Sam didn't tell Jess that his father taught him how to suture when he was fourteen. John Winchester may not have known the scientific terms for the muscles and bones that he tore and broke, but he knew how to fix them. Sam didn't tell Jess about the night that he gave his father stitches, an interrupted stitch with the square knot that he had learned on an orange peel. The lighting was dim even though they were sitting right next to a shitty, low watt lamp. His father's skin was almost grimy with sweat and dirt and probably the blood of some poor bastard who had starred as the demon's meat suit. Dean was messed up, and their dad was watching him like a hawk for any signs of a concussion. Dean was eighteen and Sam was scared for his brother and also himself because he didn't want to be the one propped against a headboard in four years, giving listless answers to pointless questions to try and stay awake. Sam was scared because he didn't want to die. He didn't need to tell Jess about all the things he'd seen and done.

He spread his arms out to his sides and closed his eyes. "Anatomize me."

"That is the correct term, after all," said Jess with a laugh and even with his eyes closed it hurt a little to look directly at something so beautiful.

Sam felt the bed move as she got closer to his body and he was buzzing with the possibility of being touched by her. She placed a hand on his chest.

"Pectoralis major." She said and Sam opened one eye to glance at the study sheet before nodding her on. Her hand dipped a little lower, right under his rib cage" serratus anterior." Sam's mouth got dry so he simply nodded his head. Jess touch got a little lighter as she moved it even further south still, "Obliquus externus abdominus." Then her hand was on his hip and Sam looked up at her. She was leaning over him, watching his face. Her hair had fallen forward as she looked at him nervously. The beautiful, brilliant virgin, biting her lip in surprise at her own boldness. Well, if they were doing bold—

"I'm going to kiss you." Sam whispered and he followed through without waiting for her to respond. He tucked her long blonde hair behind her ear and traced her lip with his thumb and tried to memorize the delicate look of want and nerves and perfection that looked down at him. He needed that. He needed her light and her innocence and her beauty because otherwise it was nightmares and dark. Why didn't he deserve something like this? Must he spend his whole life paying for a single, selfish, adolescent mistake?

Then Sam sat up and his lips met hers and she let out a surprised little 'meep' sound that Sam wanted to catch in a jar and hold near his heart for the rest of his life. He pulled away and laid back down on the bed , staring up at her and her beautiful, golden curls and the halo of light around her hair.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to kiss you now."

Then Jess leaned down and anchored him to the bed with her touch as soft as sunshine on his skin. They held together, breathing together and basking in the mutual glow of each other before Jess' lips parted fractionally and she nipped his bottom lip with her teeth. Then it was Sam's turn to make an undignified noise.

It wasn't in a frat house bathroom and it wasn't in a dark motel bed. It was flowers and light and lemon grass of summer and all the things that were good in the world. It was love, simple, unashamed love and it was beautiful in it's quiet perfection. Jess was… Technicolor. His world wasn't a series of dark hues anymore. No more black and white and doomed and dreary greys. There was the thirty kinds of gold in her hair and six shades of green in her eyes. There were purple water color poppies on her curtains and the spiny, forest greens of her ferns and she wanted him and he wanted her and it was as simple as that.

Suddenly, Sam realized that it could be as simple as that and it was a revelation.

"I'm so not going to pass this final tomorrow." Jess whispered against his lips, before smiling and diving back in, shining like the sun and washing Sam in all her light warmth and perfection.

***

"So, are you fucking her now? Is that it?" Brady snapped as Sam walked in the door the next morning. Sam had jumped because Brady was sitting in a chair, facing the door and seething like he had been doing it all night.

In actuality, no, Sam wasn't having sex with Jess. They were kissing and studying and talking about ferns and Smurfs and a thousand stupid nothings that he wanted to talk about until the day he died so long as he was talking to her. But it was none of Brady's business where he was so Sam pushed past him and started changing in his room. Brady flung open the door, clearly not done with Sam yet.

"Just tell me if you're fucking her. I have a right to know."

"No, you don't Brady. You aren't my boyfriend and I'm not even sure that I'm gay anymore. If I even was..."

"Just like that, huh? One day, you meet some blonde goody two shoes and you're suddenly on the pussy wagon?"

"It isn't about …pussy…" Sam cringed over the vulgar word. Nothing about Jess could ever be vulgar and Sam strongly disliked the implication that anyone might think that. Jess was Technicolor and Brady was being a jerk, "I can't help that I love her."

Sam might as well have punched Brady in the face for the look his roommate gave him. Sam took a step away as Brady uncoiled like a snake, opening and closing his fists and shaking his head.

"You'll stop seeing her. I'll stop seeing other guys. We'll be together and you'll love me because that is how this is supposed to go."

"Or what, you'll hit me?" Sam gave a nervous laugh at Brady's clenched fists. Sam could fight. He was bigger than Brady and he had been trained to fight bullies and bad guys since around the time puberty set in. He had been trained like a street soldier and he could take down something like Brady. That didn't mean he wanted to.

"Take off your pants and get on the bed, Sam."

"Fuck off, Brady."

"That's the idea, clever boy." Said Brady and suddenly something was different. Brady was smiling but it was hard and knowing and more terrifying than the balled fists. "You aren't fucking her. Of course you would fall in love with some chick you haven't come in. You can barely get it up for me and, after all, which of us is more like that first love of yours anyways? I've got the cock. I can fuck you like he did. What can she do about that? How can she replace Dean?"

"It isn't about replacing Dean." Said Sam. He didn't realize that he had been stepping away from Brady until his back cut into the dresser. "Knock it off, Brady."

"Am I scaring you?"

"No." Sam lied.

"We can do it up against the dresser. Is that how you did it with him?"

"You need help, Brady." Sam mumbled, "You're missing classes and you're messed up. You're different, man. Do you need to go to a meeting or something? Do you want me to go with—"

"Please cut the bullshit, Sam."

"No bullshit. I want to help you. I wan—"

"You want to save me? Now that you've got a girlfriend, you don't need to follow me around to feel alive, is that it? You fucking prick, don't you stand there like some hero. Maybe I was too much like him, huh? Hurt a little bit too much, got a little too real for you? But shes some fucking fantasy dreamland girl?"

"Brady, it wasn't li—"

"Do yourself a favor and shut up, Sam. If you need to lie to yourself, fine. Love her. Marry her. Get her pregnant for all I care 'cause nothing is going to change. It's all going to be the same and you can live a lie as long as you need to but reality is going to come back with a vengeance. You think you can escape who you are?"

"Brady, I never said I was gay. I was still figuring that stuff—"

"Gay? You think this is about sex?" Brady let out a malicious laugh.

"I'm moving out," said Sam, "I can't fight with you like this everyday. I can't watch you spiral down anymore. You're my friend and you need help."

"I'm supposed to be your friend and I'm just a little too much. A little too much like him."

"Don't you ever talk about him and don't call me again until you decide you want help."

"Ah, what a noble exit he makes!" Brady shouted at his back as Sam sped out of the apartment, "What a saint he is. He can leave me and still feel good about himself. How much longer do you need to lie to yourself, Sam? I can wait, just not forever."


	4. Normal

Sam found out, years later, that Brady had dropped out of med school. He actually heard that Brady dropped out weeks before he was scheduled to be kicked out. A 4.0 GPA had plummeted to a 2.4 in a single semester. He never did call Sam for help. Sam never heard from Brady again.

The night he left, he wandered in the dark streets of the college town. He had friends, but they were Brady's friends first and probably Brady's friends still, So Sam and the pavement did some thinking together and before he knew it, he was at the buzzer to her apartment. Sam would never be able to say how long he stared at the buttons, before it some angel of forgiveness and light, lifted his hand. Her voice was heavy and slow with sleep as she spoke through the intercom, but Sam barely got through, "hey, it's me" before the door was unlocked.

It was never a big thing between them, just an unspoken agreement. Sam lived there now. He didn't sign a lease. He didn't ask and he wasn't asked. That first night set the pattern for a hundred nights after; she asked what was wrong, he evaded her question. She pulled him into a hug and he fell into her, into her bed and held her as long as she let him, and she let him hold her all night long. It was three days before the hold turned into clutching and two nights after that before they were moving together, through clothes, panting and breathing each other's air. Then, on an ordinary night and without great ceremony, they joined together and Sam's life was never the same again.

He brought her a handful of cash on the first of the month and suddenly they were a single unit. He never went anywhere without her and she without him. One by one, his old friends, Brady's friends, fell off his radar. Jess' friends became his friends. Jess' life became his life and Sam was happy. Jess was willingly his and it was so simple that it almost hurt to think that anyone had ever suffered for something that came so easily.

One would think that Sam had learned his lesson by now.

***

Jess would never say it, because Jess wasn't the kind of person who would ever place blame, even if it was on the rightful source, but it was entirely Sam's fault. It was Sam's fault that she didn't pick up the prescription; she had rolled over in the morning, looked at the little purple box on the bedside table and murmured "fuck." It was empty and she had to go to the pharmacy because they closed early on Saturday and something about the rainbow striped underwear and the way her tank top rode up over the small of her back made Sam realize that he needed to be inside of her or the world would simply cease to exist.

And so he did, he put his big hand over the little dip between her hip and her ribs and she let out a playful moan of protest. His hand dropped from her waist to her stomach then underneath the elastic of her underwear. Her little moan of protest became an encouraging whimper and when he slipped two fingers into her. They both took shuddering breaths. She always seemed a little surprised when he was sunk in her wetness, be it his cock or his fingers. She always closed her eyes and threw her head back as if it was something new. As if they hadn't done it every day, sometimes twice a day, since he started living with her. It had been a month, but unless Jess forced him, Sam would never leave her bed, their bed, or their apartment.

Upon reflection, it was a miracle that it hadn't happened sooner.

But it didn't, it happened that morning, when Sam nestled his mouth between her legs and marveled at all the differences between sexes. With men it had been an obscene reenactment of thrusting and pumping; with women it was an entire different species of pleasure. It wasn't about pumping or thrusting or power or speed. It was about presence. It was about the pressure and the intimacy, tucked between her thighs, licking her button and tracing it with his tongue. Just pressure; humping and rhythmic never got Jess to come, it was when he swirled his tongue over the nub, flicked it with the tip, sucked it between his lips. Sex with men was more straight forward, cock and mouth or cock and ass, always the same motion, always the same speed. But with Jess, every time he went down on her was just a little different, a brand new dance, smooth and always changing. Maybe he was straight after all and Dean was just… Dean. But then, he'd never been gayer than wanting Dean and at the moment the idea of straight sex with anyone besides Jess didn't seem terribly appealing either.

Jess liked to be kissed during sex and Sam liked to make Jess happy so when she threaded her fingers through his hair, he scooted up her body and met her mouth with his. He had almost forgotten about his cock because when he was with Jess and when she was making those noises, Sam just forgot about everything. His pleasure didn't matter when Jess needed him. As usual, Sam's head and heart were worshipping the miracle that was Jess and his body was on a completely different page. But his dick was intrusively reminding him that it was there. Jess canted her hips just right and Sam guided himself into her. They moved like choreographed dancers in the lazy weekend morning light and Jess came as she always did, quietly like an angel, looking up at him with peaceful adoration. Sam came like a teenager, hard and earth shattering, as if he didn't come that hard every time.

He was tired and she was perfect so he collapsed onto her perfect body and they snoozed before she shoved him off and pointed to the clock. It was past one in the afternoon, the pharmacy was closed and she was still naked. So Sam apologized with his fingers between her legs and she forgave him with a sweet surprised noise as his hand worked her.

She told him it wasn't his fault. She should have been better organized and gotten the pill on Friday after work. She could have gotten that morning after pill on Monday. It was no one's fault. They were in love and they were young and stupid and these sorts of things happen. But it was his fault and he knew it was his fault because Jess had bought him that box of condoms and left it sitting proudly, out in the open, on his bedside table. But Jess was his and he was Jess' and he honestly forgot about protection most of the time. Jess was never something Sam even thought he would need protection from. He could eat her to a climax and completely ignore his own erection, much to his cock's disdain. He could kiss her and forget class or work or demons and nightmares. Jess was Jess and condoms were for fucking. Dean always had them in his pockets and in his bag and his wallet. Honestly, Sam was pretty sure that his brother had at least three open boxes worth on his person at all times, like some sort of safe sex boy scout. But Dean fucked anyone and anything. Jess and Sam were making love and it was more beautiful than anything the world had ever seen. So, yeah, sometimes Sam forgot about rubbers. He had forgotten about them that morning. As always, someone else to the brunt of the hit for his selfishness.

She had asked him what he wanted to do. After all, it was their problem and their future and they had a pretty big decision to make. He could be a father. She was sitting there, letting him seriously consider being a father and Sam didn't even know what to do with that. Sure, he wanted a life without demons and monsters and life or death every day. And now that he had discovered Jess, he wanted her in that bed beside him. He wanted to wake up every day with her and make love to her and laugh with her and everything everything with her forever and always. But a kid was… a kid. It was more permanent than a house or a job. It would seal him and Jess together forever. It would be theirs like nothing else before it or nothing else after it. But then they would never be the same again: suddenly there'd be a baby between them to feed and to clothe and to entertain. Sam selfishly liked how they were. He told her it was her body and her decision. It seemed like the kind of thing that good, 21st century men would say.

She wore a white dress to her appointment. In case anyone was wondering what one should wear to that sort of thing, she wore a pretty white sundress and sandals. It wasn't as dramatic as he had thought it would be. There was no one outside the office with picket signs of aborted fetuses, questioning the state of the world if Jesus had been aborted. It was just a quiet doctor's office with perfectly lovely nurses and a waiting room with magazines. She held a two issue old Redbook in her hands and stared blankly at an article telling her how go from flab to fab in three weeks but her eyes weren't moving across the page. She was just staring at it. And she looked so pale. She was so scared but she never told Sam that it was too much and he figured that she never would so he sat beside her and let her pretend that she was strong and cool and making the best informed decision. She didn't look at him when they called her name, just stood up and smiled a smile that was a few watts too bright. She said she wanted different things. She was young and bright and she had a big future ahead of her. Look how brave she was. Sam didn't know if the show was for world or for him.

The drive back home was silent in all the worst ways. She didn't cry, for all their time together Sam hadn't seen Jess ever do more than well up. They sat around their apartment for a few hours after, staring at the TV. Sam tried to touch her, soothe her, hold her but she was always stiff and seemed a little relieved when he scooted away. He told her he loved her. She told him she loved him. After a few hours she asked him to get some food from the Chinese place down the street and Sam thought she might have done it more to get him out than that she was hungry. He wished that she would just fucking tell him what she felt. She didn't even have to tell him how to make her feel better or how to feel himself; he could suss that out on his own. He was a nice guy and he could be the best boyfriend ever if she gave him the chance. But she stayed silent and stoic so he just had to feel punished. Once again, he took without thought and once again, it was someone else giving him more than his fair share.

He was pretty sure that Jess wanted to be alone, so he wandered a bit. He walked into a bookstore and aimlessly picked volumes off the shelves and skimmed through them, looking for anything to distract him. When he couldn't find a copy of Assholes Who Want Their Girlfriends to Get Abortions, he went back outside to the street. He checked his phone. If Jess was really hungry, she'd have texted or called him. Instead, the time and the picture of them together that he used as his wallpaper were looking back up at him, as of saying "Hey, remember when she was happy? Don't you know that you bring hurt everywhere you go?"

Jess needed time away from him. She needed to not see his face. The kindest thing he could give her was space so he went for a destination-less walk through the park. The sun was setting and Sam glanced up from the pavement just as the street lamps came on. That was when he saw a shadow flit just a little too fast to be innocuous. Any other person in Palo Alto would probably just assume it was someone else. Maybe their minds were playing tricks on them. Maybe shadows and streetlamps made people see things that weren't there.

He turned down a narrower path between some trees and he felt eyes on his back. He slowed down, but no one passed him. He was being followed and he was being watched. Sam hated violence. He hated how his father could be so cool about blood and gore. He hated how he could pick up the skeleton of a person, a real person who once felt things and thought things and touched and was touched, and then smile coldly and set them on fire. Sam hated guns and hated hurting and being hurt but tonight he almost wanted a fight. He was big and fast and it would feel good to have that kind of control again, even if he hated it.

So Sam sped up and slipped behind the gardening shed a few feet ahead, sinking into the shadows like he belonged there. Whoever was following him was big as well, but not as big as Sam. They wore biker boots, Sam could hear them clomping. They cleared their throat. They slowed down outside his hiding spot and Sam knew exactly who was there and, like a child, he wanted to stay hidden in the shadows, but of course Dean could always find him, even in the dark. The aluminum wall of the tool shed squeaked as his brother leaned against it.

"Sam?"

"Hey, Dean."

"You gonna come out of there?" he asked and Sam could hear that soft, knowing tone that always pissed him off.

It was like when they were kids and Sam would blow up at their dad and Dean would find him under the bed or in the closet, fuming. He would sit down, just outside of Sam's screaming slapping zone and wait it out with him. It made him so angry that Dean knew his moods better than he did. Dean could watch him grow jealous of all the girls in the backseat of the Impala. And each one of them hurt worse than the one before because each time Sam thought that she might be the girl that Dean stayed faithful to. She might be the one that he changed his life for and Sam didn't want Dean to change his life for anyone besides Sam. But Dean waited him out, laid awake, waiting for his cue to take care of Sam all over again.

And the older he got the more he realized how fucked up that was. Dean wasn't happy when Sam was jealous and fuming over all the other girls in the world. Dean would never be happy, sitting outside of the closet, waiting for Sam to calm down. So Sam did the man thing and he left Dean. Because if he left, Dean would hurt for a month, maybe a year. But if he stayed? Dean would be miserable for his entire life. But this was why Sam left. Because he couldn't be this close to his brother without reverting into his thirteen year old self, reaching for him and taking, taking, taking a person he couldn't have for things he shouldn't want.

Of course tonight, of all the nights in the world, would be the one where Dean would land back into his life.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah, Dean?"

" I missed you."

"Missed you too." Sam whispered back, haltingly.

Dean gave a snort and Sam heard him drop down onto the ground, finally sitting instead of squatting. He let out a long sigh.

"Would have fooled me." He said. It sounded like he bit the words out. "Do you wish I hadn't found you?"

"No," Sam whispered.

"Do you wish that you hadn't run away?"

"No." said Sam and he heard Dean's hurt.

He didn't know that that was a thing but he heard Dean's shoulders drop and he heard Dean's eyes water. Sam had never wanted to hurt Dean. He didn't like hurting Dean and if he wasn't careful he'd throw himself around the corner and tackle Dean to the hard earth behind the gardening shed. All these years, everything that had happened and Sam just wanted it all again. He had tried to cut out Dean cold turkey, and. suddenly here Dean was and Sam was thirteen, sitting in the dark, finally putting a name to all those dirty beautiful things he had thought about as he felt himself in tentative, unsure touches.

" _Dean,_ " Sam murmured and he heard Dean's breath shudder.

"Fuck, Sam, just… just fuck,"

" _Dean_ ," Sam said again and he could feel himself growing hard, just from the name and the memory of the quiet night of their motel room.

"I'm coming around," Dean warned.

Sam nodded, only half realizing that Dean couldn't see him. And then it was Dean. Sam couldn't see his face in the shadows but like he always had, he felt Dean's sure hands as they took him by the shoulders. He smelled the leather and the gunpowder on Dean's coat and that familiar, comforting Dean smell that Sam was afraid he would never know again. And then Sam was on his back, Dean was straddling his thigh and Dean was rubbing his cock against Sam's, through denim and on the dirt of the ground.

" _Dean _" Sam almost cried, " _Dean_ ,"__

__Sam didn't remember Dean being so loud in the past. It wasn't loud like Brady had been loud. Pornographic moans, like he had to prove to himself that he was having a good time. It wasn't even loud like Jess was loud, coos and whimpers and sighs of pleasure, like she was enjoying a very good meal. It took Sam a second to realize that they were gasps and sobs. Of desperation. Of hurt. Sam's eyes welled up and he locked his arms around Dean as Dean claimed him into the earth._ _

__" _Sam_ , Sammy, Sammy, missed you. Missed you, I missed you, so lonely, so lost without-," And Dean was speeding up, desperate, fucking, oblivious to Sam's own rhythm. Sam had always fantasized about giving Dean what he needed, letting Dean use him out, fuck him hard, take everything that Sam had to give because a part of Sam just wanted Dean to assert that he wanted something Sam had to give at all. But Dean took comfort in sacrificing. Dean found solace in taking care of Sam so Sam grew concerned as Dean clumsily bumped against him. And after a couple of minutes, of horrible, sad minutes, Dean turned his head, nestling his face against Sam's neck and Sam smelled the sterile sting of alcohol on his breath._ _

__"Dean, are you drunk?"_ _

__"Nuh, uh."_ _

__"What is this, Dean? What are you doing to yourself?" Sam murmured, running his hands through Dean's hair, as Dean kept rutting into him._ _

__"Why'd you leave, Sammy? Why'd you leave me?" asked Dean. He ran his hand over Sam's chest to his crotch, feeling it, squeezing the bulge there looking a little hypnotized by Sam's reaction. "Thought you wanted me, Sammy. Want me to give you this? I can do it, Sam, I can do it all the time if you want."_ _

__"Dean," Sam said, grabbing the hand that Dean was using to try and unzip his pants with, "Dean, stop. Stop."_ _

__"Don't you want me?"_ _

__"Yes, yes of course I—" but Sam lost Dean's attention as Dean forced a look of drunken focus on Sam's zipper. For all of Dean's sloppy drunken conquests, Sam had never had the privilege. He'd seen Dean get wasted, follow a man into the bathrooms and stay gone for a few minutes. He'd watched Dean come home so plastered he barely made it to the bed, his hands always smelling of pussy and his pants always a little disheveled. But Dean was always moderately sober when he was with Sam. Even that first time, Sam had waited until Dean's eyes got a little soft with the vodka before he reached for him, but Dean wasn't drunk. Dean was never as drunk as he was right now._ _

__Sam's sober hand was stronger than Dean's fumbles so it was easy to stop him from swiping at the front of his pants. Sam wondered if Dean could see him in the shadows of the bushes. He couldn't see Dean, lit from above and behind but he felt Dean's eyes searching his face as he laid out beneath him on the ground._ _

__"Don't you want me?" Dean slurred._ _

__"You can't always have what you want."_ _

__"Come home with me, Sam. Come home with me tonight."_ _

__"Dean, you don't have a home. You have a motel room."_ _

__"Home is where the heart is, Sammy." Said Dean around a smile that Sam could hear if he couldn't see. "You're right, I don't have a home."_ _

__Dean got off of Sam and staggered upright. After a second of adjusting his coat, Dean gave his head a single shake and if Sam hadn't smelt his breath and felt his clumsy fingers, he wouldn't have known that Dean was plastered. Suddenly Sam wondered how many times he'd seen Dean hunt or drive and simply not been physically close enough to realize how drunk he was. Sam stood behind him and Dean turned to face him. After a moment of Dean looking up at him, they moved towards the well-lit path. Sam led the way. Dean was always a little less sure of himself in the light._ _

__"Is dad here with you too?"_ _

__"Haunting in Big Sur," said Dean gruffly and Sam noticed the more than casual distance between himself and his big brother._ _

__"You found me."_ _

__"'Course we did."_ _

__"You wanted to talk to me?"_ _

__"No. Yes. You know how worried I've been? How wrecked Dad's been?"_ _

__"He's the one who told me to never call. He's the one who said don't come back."_ _

__"You know what, Sam? That's bullshit. Dad could be a real dick sometimes but you knew, you fucking knew, how messed up he'd get. Dad says shit he doesn't mean. A lot—most of the time. He loves you, alright? Just 'cause he doesn't say it every ten minutes don't mean he doesn't."_ _

__"Oh, and the leaving us? And the hunts? And the guns and the yelling and the drinking. He says things he doesn't mean? What about what he does Dean? He's never there and when he is, he's always going on about how we're not good enough."_ _

__"He's a fucking wreck Sam, and he has been as long as we can both remember. Doesn't mean he doesn't deserve our love."_ _

__"Are we talking about dad or you?"_ _

__"Sam—"_ _

__"Look, he's made his bed. Twenty years of this crap. Hunting and fighting and drinking and hunting again. Maybe if we were a little older we could have helped. Maybe if we weren't kids we could have taken care of him and saved him from himself but we were kids and he made his choice that he wants this life of shit. But you? Damn it, Dean, why don't you see that you're better than this?"_ _

__"You left, Sam."_ _

__"I left to give normal a try."_ _

__"Yeah, and now you've got a girlfriend and an apartment. With rent. And utilities bills. How's normal going for you, Sam?"_ _

__"I meant normal for you, Dean. I am poison to you. You weren't happy when we were teenagers."_ _

__"Well, now it's fucking rainbows and unicorns all day long."_ _

__"I just want you to be normal. To be ok. To have roots someplace and to grow and build something with people."_ _

__"Yeah, white picket fence, couple kids, fat wife, nine to five. That's your dream, Sam, not mine, so don't lay your shit on me."_ _

__"I said normal not suburbia. The only two options in the world aren't hunting or Stepford for fucks sake, Dean. I just wanted you to get away from Dad. I wanted you to wake up and see that you're better than the way he treats yo—"_ _

__"I'm not having this conversation with you."_ _

__"You found me, Dean. You tracked me and you followed me. What did you want?"_ _

__"I don't know, Sam. I wasn't going to say anything or do anything I was just going to let you live and be normal and I… I couldn't help myself." Dean had led them to the Impala parked on the curb by the park and Dean leaned against the door. Sam stood next to him. "Look, get in. We could be in another state by morning. We could pretend this never happened. We could go back to—"_ _

__Dean let it hang in the air, heady and thick and suddenly Sam was thirteen and Dean was touching him and Sam thought he might die because it felt so good. And then suddenly, Dean was seventeen and vomiting their shame in the bathroom._ _

__"You weren't happy, then, Dean."_ _

__"I'm not happy now."_ _

__"Give it time, please, Dean."_ _

__Dean closed his eyes as Sam pleaded with him and something soft and intimate flashed across his features, features that Sam had never seen like that because before, it had always been done in the dark. He wanted to see Dean, beautiful Dean, in the light. Dean belonged there, bright and noble. Sam didn't know why his brother shied away from it. Dean was perfect and the only thing wrong about him was Sam._ _

__Dean reached forwards and skimmed a finger along Sam's hip and Sam shuddered. Dean was watching his hand as it traced Sam's belt loops, played along the seam of his pocket, started heading to his crotch. Sam didn't dare breathe because then harsh logic and self-restraint and guilt might come in with the oxygen and Dean was just so beautiful like that. Even if he looked so defeated._ _

__Suddenly Sam's phone vibrated and Dean stared at that part of Sam's pocket. Numb and stone faced, he stared at the thing that dared to take Sam away from him._ _

__"Dean I'm sorry, I've…" and Sam gestured to his phone. Dean's jaw clenched and he gave his trademark, cocky smile that was so hard Sam wondered if it ever worked on anyone. He pulled the phone out and opened it, holding to his ear. He didn't need to check who was calling him._ _

__"Sam?" asked Jess, shakily, "Sam, I think I need you to come home now."_ _

__"Ok, Jess, Ok, I'm coming home."_ _

__"I love you so much, Sam." She whispered through the cell phone; even alone in their apartment, Jess kept up appearances. She only let Sam hear her crumble, "I need you. I need you home with me. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. It's my fault, it's all my fault and I'm so scared… I love you. I need you. Come home, Sam. Come home."_ _

__"Jess," Sam said back, shaky, just like her. But he was looking at Dean. He was watching Dean watch him and it hurt like a bitch but Sam knew where he belonged. It was finally clear. "Jess, it's my fault. It's my fault and it hurts me to watch you blame yourself. I hate watching you hurt, I never wanted to do that to you. God, I love you. I love you so fucking much. "_ _

__"Come home, Sam."_ _

__"Yeah, Jess. Yeah, I'm coming home."_ _

__Dean slid out from between Sam and the Impala and walked around to the driver's side, with so much swagger that Sam almost didn't see him wipe his eyes on the shoulder of their father's leather jacket. Almost._ _

__With one last, bracing smirk, Dean held his arms out to the empty, deserted parking lot of the square, congratulating Sam on how he got everything he wanted. The slamming door of the Impala was that part of Sam's life finally slamming closed. Sharp, harsh, loud and not without hurt, but final nonetheless._ _

__Jess needed Sam. They made a mess, together. They cleaned it up, together. Normal wasn't perfect. Normal wasn't easy but with Jess, it was ok, because she needed him and he needed her and it was simple between them._ _

__The kindest thing Sam could ever give Dean was space from this mess he created between them._ _


	5. RIptide

Dean Winchester heard the girl give a long sniff of her nose through the bathroom door and winced involuntarily. He highly doubted that she was crying.

Dean fell back against the bed and tossed his arm over his face, drowning out the sounds of the TV from the room next door. It was a cheap motel, even by Dean's admittedly cheap standards, and the sooner he went to sleep the sooner he could be awake and headed out of this godforsaken city in this godforsaken state. Dean was starting to hate California.

Like the girl, the room was rented by the hour. Dean honestly couldn't tell what color the carpet had been originally and the threadbare comforter on the mattress might as well have been steel wool for the way it caught on his calloused skin. This room was like the room before, in the state before, in the hunt before. Then the one before that. And then the one before that. They were all the same, from the inoffensive beige wallpaper to the manufactured, geometric designs crisscrossing through the carpet and girls, blank eyed and sallow skinned, just a few blocks away.

Dean only bought girls. He still happily screwed men when the mood struck, but he only paid for the soft bodies, smaller than his and supple and uncomplicated beneath his fingers. All the boys were too young. They always reminded him of something sad and beautiful that he left behind at a truck stop near the Texas-Mexico border with a piece of himself.

Dean didn't need to pay for it, something that he prided himself on, something almost all the bought women commented on. With eyes like that they always said, With a smile like that then they would let it trail off, an unspoken question.

And most of the time, Dean didn't buy it. He liked women. He was _good_ at women in bars. Everyone, every single person in a bar was looking for something. They could be drinking alone or quietly with friends but instead they chose to go out. Chose to look for something in the sea of strange faces and the blur of alcohol and music. Sometimes they were looking for a knight in shining armor. Sometimes it was a mysterious man with a heart of gold. And sometimes, most of the time, Dean reckoned, they didn't know what they were looking for. Dean loved the flirting, the word play, the jokes, the innuendos. He loved the brushes against his arm, the too close whispers into his ear, the giggle, too easy and too high to be anything other than an invitation. An invitation to whatever it was that they were looking for, and Dean was damn good at convincing them that he was it.

But sometimes he couldn't. Sometimes the hunt was too long and the room was too quiet but the bars were too loud. Sometimes he needed to buy something, own something hot and plush and willing, even without a smile, even without having to prove he was worth it. Sometimes he needed to push something down and conquer it, just to feel a little control. Maybe at the end of it all, he was just proving to himself that he had any control in this big joke that was his fucking life.

Dean's skin was crawling with the harsh, high pitched sounds of his neighbors' TV. The beige walls were closing in on him. The stained carpet was moving beneath his feet. This room, like a hundred, a million, rooms before it was locking him in like a prison. He glanced unnecessarily at the clock on his night stand; it was late, too late for anyone besides the demons and the whores to be out in the night but Dean couldn't stay in the motel. He couldn't spend another night in the solitary confinement of the beige walled prison. Maybe if he got out of California. Maybe if he got further away from the family that left him behind.

Both his Dad and his brother left him; the difference was that he knew where Sam was. Sam was a riptide, pulling him in, pulling him into something he should have never wanted in the first place, something that outgrew him. He had to start swimming again, fight the pull of the current because his disgusting need for Sam and Sam's fucking pure and normal love was a goddamn force of nature. Dean couldn't fight it. He could never conquer it. He just had to get used to swimming against the pull, keeping his head above water. Everything in his big fucking joke of a life was just keeping his head above the water.

He got up from the bed and knocked, maybe a little to fast and harsh, against the bathroom door. There was the sound of hurried shuffling and then the door opened to the small, beady eyes of the girl he paid for upfront. She gave a guilty smile.

"Sorry, baby, I'll let you get some rest." She said with a hard smile that Dean sometimes saw on his own face in the mirror behind the bar.

"Can I buy a bump off you?" he asked abruptly and she recovered her taken aback look with another smile.

"You don't need this, sugar. Get some rest. You need it."

'Girl' had been a general term, and now that he had already come and was looking at her in the combined light from the doorway of the bathroom and the light from the nightstand, he couldn't deny what he had so easily shoved into the back of his head as she bounced on his dick twenty minutes ago. She was old enough to be his mother, late forties maybe even older than his father, in her mid fifties. The foundation make-up was settling into the crow's feet by her eyes and was cracking around her mouth, the line of paint breaking as she smiled, among other things, for all the men who drove by. Dean liked women. That included older women, but that was when they were doing things without the coy act of girls half their age. Not when they were using that motherly tone of voice on him. Dean didn't need a mother anymore, that ship had sailed and Dean would be the first to admit that he had suffered from the lack of it. But he didn't need this now.

The woman's smile broke a little bit and she led him to the nightstand, measuring him out a line.

"I don't have enough for that, can only buy a bump right now. Kinda low on cash." He said it with his winning smile, the one she had to recognize because her eyes softened as she looked him over. With a smile like that… hung unspoken in the air. She knew that he didn't buy her because he was into anything weird; didn't want to call her 'Mommy' or put on a plushie costume or anything else that might put off a prettier, younger thing in a bar. He was broken, she saw that much, and he could feel her wonder why. Stupid whore, didn't she know better than go looking for that kind of shit? She looked away from him and back to her task, taking one of the hundred dollar bills he had given her for services provided and rolled it into a straw.

"I don't need to pay for it, baby. You shouldn't either." She said softly, offering the straw to him.

Of course her pimp or her previous client or hell, maybe a drug dealer she fucked earlier in the night gave it to her for free. The only kind of whores that sold were the ones walking the streets and it was getting truly late. Sharing with him was an unexpected generosity, though. Dean gave an appreciative smile.

He hesitated as he held the straw to his nose, then glanced back up at her. "This is just coke, right? It isn't meth?"

She gave a weak, reassuring smile and Dean decided that he really didn't want to know.

***

Dean answered the phone from the driver's seat of the Impala.

"You weren't in Sacramento." His father's ever-tired voice came through the receiver.

"Finished the hunt, wanted to move on. Didn't know that you were going to meet up with me. You there now?"

"Not for long."

Dean glanced at a mile sign on the highway, and realized that it was sunlight, not headlights that lit the road. He had been driving for almost ten hours and had hardly even noticed. Any other time, any other night he would have turned around and driven another ten hours just to see his father, see the whites of his eyes and all of his limbs intact. But he was so fucked up right now. Too fucked up to deal with anything besides the asphalt and Zeppelin and his beautiful baby, his constant companion. "Where are you now?"

"Almost at Seattle."

"Been driving all night?"

"Since about two, yeah. Couldn't sit still. Wanted to move on."

There was a pause, long and loaded as his father processed this. John Winchester was very familiar with Dean's erratic benders, increasing as they were in frequency since Sam left. For a while, at least, without the pretext of Sam to keep him away, John took Dean to hunt with him. They worked like a team, like a family, and it wasn't so bad. But without Sam to keep him clean, Dean let himself fall into drinking and screwing and doing all the things that he had a harder time doing when he knew that it was Sam who would take his boots off and tuck him in when he finally stumbled into the motel room. Worse than Sam being pissed at Dean or jealous of the people Dean took to bed was Sam being disappointed in Dean.

Sam wasn't dirty. Sam didn't know how it felt to be someone's it. Sam didn't need strange hands and voices telling him that he was beautiful because Sam really was, inside and out. Dean had 'those eyes' and 'that smile' but he was a big, dirty mess of a man who did lines with hookers and fell in love with boys in bathrooms. He was broken behind that pretty face that men clutched as he let them use his mouth. Sam didn't understand why Dean needed that, and just watched with sad eyes and thin lips as Dean tried to make himself feel whole.

Maybe it was because John recognized a broken person when he saw one, but there was little protest whenever Dean took that shot of whiskey that would officially take him from wasted to blacked out. He always took it knowingly and bracingly, poison and medicine in a single swallow. Dean never asked his Dad to help him and maybe John was waiting for him to. There was no hunting him down, no intervention, no real, obvious attempt to stop them or temper the self destructive path of the bender when his father saw all the signs of the mood coming. John Winchester had been on a twenty-two yearlong bender and they both knew perfectly well that he had no right to say a word. Judgment was never really his father's style. But it was harder for John to turn a blind eye to it when Dean was too fucked up to even lie properly.

"Got another hunt?"

"Maybe. Something in Eugene. Did you want to meet up—"

"No. No, I've got a hunt in Jericho… Just…Be careful, Dean."

"I'm always careful, Dad."

More silence, then dial tone as Dean was left alone, again.

***

Sam's house smelled like Sam. Sam and something foreign, not unpleasant, just different and painful in its easiness. It smelled like lemon candles and the lingering notes of whatever they had cooked for dinner and Sam. It smelled like Sam and a home. It smelled like Sam and the girl that Dean had always told himself that he wanted for his baby brother.

Sam was just as fast as he was when they were teenagers, the last time they were sprawled among each other. When Sam was twelve and Dean was sixteen Dean would let Sam pin him. The kid was a bit chubby in the face still, and short, especially compared to Dean who had filled out well and early. He needed the encouragement, the validation that he was good at it because Dean was sure that he hated it. Sammy didn't even like movies with too much violence, he definitely didn't like hitting his brother, even when his father demanded it. Even when Dean encouraged it.

Then, somehow, without Dean being quite sure how or when, Sam pinned him genuinely. Locked his leg behind Dean's flipped him over and pinned him to the ground, looking down at him with a smirk and pure, terrifying, hot-as-fuck heat. Sam knew all along that Dean had been letting him win. But now Sam didn't need it, he could win on his own now. The tables had turned and they never went back. He wasn't going to boast or rub Dean's face in it, but he would smirk down at his 'big' brother, even after the term smacked of irony.

Dean had sort of hoped that getting Sam out of that apartment, all girlish accents and spindly plants in the windows would feel like Sam again, smell like Sam again. But Sam carried that smell, that hint of her all over him, even long after they left. And Dean decided that it was probably better that way. Better that he was constantly reminded of how Sam finally had what he wanted, that girl waiting for him at that home he finally had after all these years. Dean hadn't ruined Sam after all. Look how happy he was when Dean wasn't around.

It had been a year ago since Dean went to Stanford, finally surrendered and had wound up in Sam's arms and Sam's town and Sam's normal, beautiful life. Dean had fucking given up swimming and let the tide pull him towards Sam or drown him altogether, whichever happened first because Dean was kind of OK with both.

His father had left a vague note on the nightstand, something about Minnesota and a heavily implied 'none of your damn business' and then Dean was alone. Two days after the note, John called and told Dean about a salt and burn two towns over from where he left him. He wanted Dean to "take care of it" and suddenly Dean realized that he had graduated without a ceremony from John Winchester's hunting academy and was on his own. His father had never let him do one by himself before. There was no, "I know you can do it, son." Just a "take care of it" and "be careful" tacked on at the end, like an afterthought.

And Dean knew that his father preferred hunting alone. He knew that his father was a better hunter alone and he tried to not let it sting like it did. But sometimes Dean got sick of knowing how well everyone was doing when he wasn't in sight. But he needed that reminder now, with Sam sitting in the passenger's seat, smelling like her.

But the longer Sam was with Dean, the more he started to smell like Sam again. Not Sam in the bushes of a park behind a tool shed, but Sam at eighteen, living amongst the stale clothes, cheap take-out and the hunter's helper that Dean and John drank by the gallon. She smelled clean, like fresh air and candles and cooking. She smelled pure and beautiful and normal and Sam just absorbed that so easily, like he was made for it. Like he was normal too and he was happy in her Downy fresh sheets.

Sam was smiling and bitching about Metallica and smelling like the old Sammy who used to cling to him in the night so Dean almost forgot that he didn't belong there anymore. Sam belonged with her. And Dean belonged alone.

"I'll take you home." Said Dean. And the words hurt just as much as they did when Dean was drowning and Sam went back to her. And Sam did the smart thing and the right thing and the beautiful thing and chose her over Dean and his dark dirty mess of a life and his series of beige walled prisons smelling like stale air cheap girls.

So Dean let him go to her bed, to her arms and her normal, beautiful life and he drove away because… just because. Because Sam was happy and just because misery loves company doesn't mean it should get it.

But Dean didn't drive off, because he was clearly a masochist. He drove a block, then circled back, killing the headlights. It took him a few long minutes, across the street from their apartment, to look away from the road in front of him to the window of their bedroom.

Maybe he was waiting for Sam to turn around, to come back out the door and call for him. Maybe he was waiting for Sam to come out and climb into the Impala and murmur, _Dean_ again, just so that Dean would know for certain the best and worst moments of his adolescence weren't just perverted dreams and fantasies he had all by himself. That Sam saw how dirty he was and made him clean by wanting him.

But, despite what Sam loved to claim, Dean wasn't delusional. He knew where Sam belonged. He knew where Sam was happy and more than Dean wanting Sam to fill the silence of his motel room with pleas and pleasure broken breaths in the dark, he wanted Sam to be happy. And Sam was happy with her. She was his it, that thing that Sam had been looking for the whole time and Dean just wasn't.

What Dean was waiting for was for the bedroom light to turn on. Dean was waiting to see her silhouette through the floral curtains and then see his shadow join hers and watch them meet somewhere in the middle and in the light like lovers instead of in the dark and in the shame like brothers who both know better.

Then Dean heard the cry, long and mournful. Then Dean saw the light, too fast and too bright, and something primal in him, something hard wired from the age of four kicked in. Sam was on their bed, screaming for her and Dean grabbed him, saved him, even as Sam fought him.

Sam smelled like smoke in the passenger seat of the Impala. Sam smelled like smoke and sat rigid in a way that was eerie in the way he looked like their father. He wasn't crying, he was beyond that, or maybe he wasn't there yet. He was cold, stock still and hard faced. He was terrifying.

But he was there. And Dean was there. And they had work to do.

So they drove off into the dark. Together.


End file.
